Archimedes' Fulcrum
by jozette
Summary: When Cas becomes human, he brings some unexpected baggage with him that keeps him and Dean apart. Neither will stop at anything, even subverting the natural order, to be together. A new talent of Cas' may be their salvation or undoing when they fall in the middle of a shapeshifter conflict that threatens every alliance they have-or just may prove Heavenly politics right.
1. Chapter 1

Dean tried to focus on the fight, but that was getting more difficult now that his brain was transmitting Sesame Street nonstop.

That wasn't strictly true, he thought while in combat with the enemy du jour. His mental television had been sending him nonstop programming from the Adult Swim version of the educational TV show for some time now. Every night when he closed his eyes he saw a Muppet shaped like the letter 'M' sidle up to an 'A' and an 'N.' "M-A-N!" they sang in chirpy unison. "This show is brought to you by the letter 'MAN'! "'Man' is for—"

"Dean! Dean, toss me the salt!" Man-tongue was saying next to him.

He passed over the canister to Man-hand. "Here you go, Cas," Dean said weakly.

It must have been happening ever since the newly human Cas had joined him and Sam on the road full-time, but Dean didn't notice any changes in himself at first. The brothers were still getting used to the idea that their friend was no longer a celestial big shot, but as usual they had little time to think because there were monsters to be ganked, enemies to be vanquished, brotherly conflicts to be stewed over, etc.

The Winchesters quickly learned that Cas knew even less about his new self than they did, so they had to keep one eye on the third of their trio to make sure he didn't get his new meatsuit shredded right out of the gate.

That must have been it, Dean thought. Paying so much attention to every move made by that vulnerable human body rendered him unable to stop thinking about it.

It was downright distracting during a fight—"Man-arms, man-lips, man-ass, man-penis" (the fact that the last one was redundant was, overall, the least of his worries) —but at night when the three of them were sleeping in their motel room it was even worse.

From whatever spot was Dean's in their sleep-rotation (two days on a bed, one day the poor schmuck on the floor) he tried to retrace his steps and figure out where he'd picked up this curse.

It was like that one time he made Sam's computer get a virus and he watched helplessly while it downloaded screen after screen of malevolent code. That time he'd gotten the computer stuck on images of Busty Asian Beauties, but somehow he'd contracted a gay porn virus and it was overwhelming his mental hard drive with pictures of cock, ass and everything in between.

At each stop along the way, Dean stole a few minutes to himself to consult with some occultists who could help figure out what had happened to him and, more importantly, how to stop it.

The charlatans were the best. Dean liked the cheap comfort he derived from the spells and powders bought from people who didn't know anything. He gladly wore a charm inside his left shoe and mentally repeated something in what sounded like pig Latin every time he had an unwanted thought.

He stopped seeking a remedy after running into a string of palm readers, Tarot experts and astrologers who refused to help him because they knew their shit.

"Honey, this way too hot for me to handle," a turbaned old woman said before her cards near Mobile, Alabama. "Oo-wee, this is a love story on a cosmic scale, and you want me to jump in the middle of it and help you say 'No, thanks'? I don't want to get burned, sugar—no, you keep that money." The woman waved him out of her shop.

"Your chart says you've had something as big as a freight train on a collision course with your Venus for your entire life, and only now do you see it and want me to help you get out of the way?" the dry old man said, looking up from Dean's astrological chart with a gleam in his eye. "This is a confluence of forces you don't see every day. You should feel energized by things finally coming into balance for you. Hell, I've only sat next to you for a few minutes and I'm feeling the urge to close up shop early go home to the missus—let me tell you, that hasn't happened in years."

Dean even resorted to a regular shrink during one of their stops.

"I'm having these thoughts, Doc. It's like something else has taken over my head."

The psychologist looked up, his face concerned. "Are you hearing voices?"

"Yes."

"Are they telling you to do something dangerous to yourself or others?

"Yes."

"What are they saying?"

"Man-nipples," Dean whispered miserably.

The man fussed with his suit-coat. "Not yours!" his patient cried. "Somebody else's."

"Is this man similarly aware of you?" the counselor asked.

"He might be," Dean murmured. He couldn't figure out what Cas might feel for him, or what he wanted him to feel, at this point.

Sam and Dean were so used to existing around each other's bad moods that the other's internal conflict was just background noise at this point. Thankfully, the younger brother didn't seem to have noticed Dean's constant state of turmoil or its cause.

And Cas was so busy experiencing everything for the first time, it was hard to tell what was the specific cause of his wonder at any given moment. The two of them had been spending a lot of time together ever since Cas became human, partially so that Dean could drum a few human niceties in along with the survival skills. A hunter who always said exactly what was on his mind posed a danger to all of them.

As his thoughts started going haywire, Dean would be struggling to turn the volume down on the voice narrating all of this male body's charms to him, and he would look over to find Cas' eyes gazing at him. It must be the new softness to his friend's features, Dean told himself when he sometimes imagined a wave of warmth coming to him from Castiel.

"He's too new to this guy thing to be freaked out by another guy being into him," Dean comforted himself. "If he knew better, he wouldn't need me to tell him not to rearrange his junk while talking to a lady, or tell him where to stand to hit the urinal just right, or that you always leave one space in between if there's an extra, and that you never, ever look over at the other guy while you're taking care of business."

His job as co-caretaker must be why Dean was so hyper-aware of what was going on with Cas' new penis, and that was making him think about dicks other than his own for the first time in his life. He must have been around thousands of cocks in his lifetime, but now Dean walked around hearing a low rustling reminding his own member that it was not alone. This merely made him unable to look men in the eye, and even less able to look at them anywhere else.

If anything, it was Cas who was behaving inappropriately, not Dean. The two brothers were taking turns being instructors on how to be human, but as the one who'd always spent more time with the ex-angel, Dean naturally took on more of these instructor tasks.

Anything from injuries to ice cream gave them an excuse to be together, to have the real conversations Dean could only have with someone who didn't know enough to fall into the wide moat he'd dug around himself.

They laughed and had each other's backs during fights and if only Dean wasn't excruciatingly aware of what Cas smelled like, the heat of his hand as it passed him a beer, the way the familiar features looked when they slept, the elder Winchester would find the whole thing interesting and rather touching. A third brother fitting perfectly into the place they'd always reserved for him.

Except brothers don't make out.

It happened during the shaving lesson Dean gave Cas so he didn't cut himself all to hell every time. Standing next to his friend in front of a motel mirror, holding his face just so and carefully stroking it with the razor—it was the closest contact he'd had with Cas since everything got all weird, and Dean was trying to enjoy every second of it without drawing blood.

He paused. They looked at each other, first in the mirror, then eye to eye.

With shaving cream on half his face, Cas leaned up and kissed him.

He had no idea how long it took that tidal wave to come and go, but Dean finally found himself again clinging to the bathroom counter behind him, weak in the knees.

He saw Cas looking at him like a bug.

"That was interesting," the raspy voice said.

"Why did you do that?" Dean gasped, not able to summon sufficient outrage.

"I wanted to see if you felt the same way." Cas blinked.

"And?"

"I can't be sure. Do you, Dean, want to attain increasing levels of intimacy with me?"

Dean's brain calculated rapidly. "If that means sex, I'm in," he replied and then clapped his hands over his mouth. "Did I just say that?" Cas was still gazing at him placidly. "Well, does it?"

"It was my first kiss," the earnest voice said, and something tugged at Dean about being Cas' first kiss. "How is it supposed to feel?"

All of this—thinking—after what was for Dean a visceral experience was starting to piss him off.

"Did you like it or not?" he shot back.

"I've experienced worse sensations. The other day when I dislocated my arm and you put it back in its socket was extremely unpleasant."

Dean stared at him in horror.

"You are uncomfortable. If I have done something inappropriate, please forgive me, Dean." This was the rote apology Dean had trained Castiel to utter whenever he saw a social faux pas had weirded someone out, but Dean had never thought to expect this particular awkward situation.

"The earth moved for me, okay? Like it's supposed to when you kiss someone you've apparently had a five-year hardon for." He splashed cold water on his face and left Cas to finish shaving himself.

From then on Dean endeavored not to be alone with Cas if he could help it. He heard Sam counseling their new companion one day, "When Dean gets in one of these moods you just have to stay out of his way."

Dean tried his usual method of drowning his inner turmoil in drink, women and classic rock turned up at full volume, but all he could feel was tremendously cheated that this was the love affair every psychic and palm reader had told him was "cosmic" and "too hot to handle."

One evening Dean thought the other two were going out for drinks and possible girl action, but when he came back to the motel, Cas was there.

Alone. With his pants down. Alternately looking at a straight porno movie on pay-per-view and a gay porn magazine open at his side. He made no move to cover up, and sat there examining Dean's face intently.

"What are you doing? Don't you remember the 'guys don't get naked together' rule I taught you?" Dean averted his eyes.

"I was trying to understand why this is not working the way I expected," Cas said so sadly that Dean crumpled down on the next bed.

"It seems to be working pretty well to me," he said in the same tone, looking out of the corner of his eye.

"Yes, well, it seems my arousal response happens only with women," came the serene voice. "That's rather unusual, I thought; angels have a saying that humans get so excited about sexual preference for no reason, because everyone is mixture of erotic impulses with perhaps a preponderance lying on one side or the other, but—"

"Well, my preponderance swung the other way when you came back and it's struck me about as easy as a ton of bricks," Dean explained. "Wait, you really wish you were attracted to men—"

"I've really only thought about one man in particular," Cas said, glancing up through his eyelashes.

"But you're not," Dean finished painfully.

"Evidently not," his companion said with confusion. "It must be that Jimmy was, how do you say, straight as an arrow, and his cognitive programming, which I copied when I used his body as a model for my incarnation, it must have tied my sexual response only to women, as his was."

Dean knew that Cas looked like his old vessel but wasn't Jimmy at all, so the basic concepts he was hearing were not new, but something painful was fitting into place.

"You lived inside him for years! You guys never talked about this?"

"It never came up."

"Dammit, Cas, you don't do the Vulcan mind meld with somebody for keeps without checking these things out first!"

"I had to incarnate in the space of a few instants, and yes, I did think about the neural environment I'd been borrowing from Jimmy. 'Do I want to be able to walk?' I asked myself. And I copied his brain contents so that I would have all the adult conditioning I needed," Cas said with his budding sense of sarcasm.

Dean took out his flask and had a long draught before passing it to the other man. "I'm in my mid-thirties. People don't start having—feelings—all of a sudden—"

"But you are," Cas said softly. "And that is very moving for me, after all this time thinking you couldn't feel anything for me, you would never notice me—"

"What? Even when you were a celestial Ken doll you still were into me?" Dean's heart was beating very fast. He knocked back another drink. "But all this," he gestured at his own rock-hard crotch, "You don't want to do it, or have it do you, or however it would work." Dean's fantasies were flowing in a certain direction, but he chose not to recognize that right now.

"It appears not."

Dean tentatively reached out and grazed the other man's thigh once, twice, three times, again, his heart in his throat, hoping to revive his erection. They watched his lap stay stubbornly inert.

"You must not give two shits about me, because you would feel something." Dean shifted away.

"I feel intensely unhappy that you are unhappy."

"Great. Codependency. I get all of the bad parts of love, none of the good ones." The word came out without Dean meaning to use it. He blamed it on the psychics who'd oversold this affair. "They could've been more specific."

"Who?" Cas inquired curiously.

The long string of back-alley bunkum artists promising passion galore was one humiliation Dean intended to keep to himself. He gazed at the pantsless ex-angel looking at him with head cocked in sympathy. Dean, for one, knew that he'd risked his manhood tonight, and for nothing.

Having his attraction apple-cart upset predictably made him pissy. "Do you have to be so-there? Stop being hot at me, Cas. Put your damn pants on."

The other man got dressed with a pained expression. "You don't want me to be here? I don't want to go, Dean. We're alive together. It's my dream."

They sat together and glumly watched the porno still playing on television.

"This is all on you, then, for having G-rated dreams."

The man and woman moaning onscreen was garnering more interest from Cas than Dean.

Suddenly the ex-angel whirled and then faced Dean earnestly. "But I already care deeply for you, and now I get to share the experience of being human with you. If you only understood what a great happiness this moment is for me, that all our moments have been since I became also a man. We still could be alone, and I have had oceans of time alone, Dean, but we finally have each other."

A silence.

"We can obtain female companionship together," came the suggestion.

"Double date?" Dean exploded. "I get within ten feet of you and I freaking melt into a puddle of girly rainbows and flowers Trapper-Keeper-I-heart-Castiel with you and you want to double date?"

"Anything we do together gives me great pleasure."

"My brain is stuck on the gay porn channel and I get turned on thinking about sneaking into the shower with you and you're saying everything can stay the same? This is not a polite little can I shake your hand, It's can I s—oh, never mind," Dean broke off before voicing that recurring desire. He grabbed the gay magazine and shoved it under the mattress just in time.

The key sounded in the lock. "Dean, maybe Cas isn't quite so lowbrow in his tastes," Sam said, coming in and surveying the movie on TV. "What the hell did I say?" the younger brother asked Cas when Dean slammed out of the room.

"It was not his choice of entertainment," Cas said softly. "Perhaps, as you say, we should leave him be."

The elder Winchester's moodiness reached critical levels the more he had to witness Cas picking up girls when the trio stopped for drinks to unwind.

Cas' attempts to bring his female of the evening and a friend for Dean were quickly iced out, and usually Dean either drank alone or hustled pool for a distraction.

Sometimes, though, Cas' process of discovering the world was so entertaining, so endearing, that the new human charmed Dean out of his bad mood. The veteran drinker loved having this new drinking companion, and this evening the two of them had been sitting in a bar talking about drinking etiquette, like why the rule that each person should buy a round didn't apply to a group of 100 people, when Dean froze.

"I've not said one word about you doing your thing, Cas. I watch night after night while you pick up chicks and most of the time I find a way to be happy for you. But this is another rule of etiquette—don't give come-hither looks over the shoulder of the person who's freaking pining away for you!"

Someone nearby gave Dean a glance and he lowered his voice. "It's just tacky."

"You speak of this tackiness as if it were the worst sin of all," Cas rejoined in the annoyance that was their fallback tone from when they first met. "But I fail to understand why hurting your amorous instincts would be in the same category as wearing light socks with dark shoes."

Dean realized with a jolt that simultaneously wanting to kiss Cas and to pummel him was the essence of their relationship.

"What are you fighting about?" Sam joined them.

"Whether that redhead over there is giving Cas the eye. I say yes."

"And I say she finds Dean endlessly charming," Cas snapped, his inhibitions down after a couple beers.

"Go on, Cas," Sam urged. "Dean knows how to get what he wants."

Dean swallowed his retort with a mouthful of beer. At least with Cas the reason for his misery was out on the table. He answered Sam in monosyllables.

It was his own fault that he had no one else to talk to about this unwelcome turn his life had taken. Dean Winchester's macho cred was unimpeachable. He hoped Sam would take a hint and leave him in peace to listen to Cas trying out Dean's old pickup lines on another girl.

"I feel it too." Sam's voice made him jump.

"Huh?"

"I kind of miss the old Cas. There was something so pure about him—there still is—but it's kind of weird to see him use it to score."

Cas looked over the girl's shoulder at that moment and beamed at them.

The older brother's voice came out gently in spite himself. "For a being as old as he is, his time on earth must seem really short. Cas knows just like we do that you have to grab what pleasure you can because life ain't no walk in the park."

The word "grab" must have caused some of Dean's unhappiness to flicker across his face because his brother thumped him on the shoulder. "You should find a little comfort for yourself, if you want it. That brunette has been looking you over like she's considering buying." Sam misinterpreted the look on his face. "I know you like dark-haired vixens, just like I know Cas' type, too."

"What do you mean?"

"He's more into what girls have down south rather than up top. Look," Sam indicated the ex-angel and his conquest walking out of the bar. "Nice ass."

It was a nice ass.

"Anyway, brother, I've got first driving shift tomorrow so you do what you need to do tonight." Sam slapped him on the back and left.

Dean was perfectly aware of where the easiest pickings lay in any bar, although these days he was looking more for an alibi than a good time. That night, he conducted the seduction on auto-flirt while mentally planning his getaway strategy. Often, he claimed to be all out of condoms, and running out to buy some was his way out of a sexual encounter that simply didn't do it for him like it used to. If the girl had condoms then he would feign a sudden, blinding migraine, or he'd even had to resort to claiming every STD in the book just to get a drunken, horny honey to let him run off into the night with his conflicted erection and the strange conviction that he shouldn't just give it away to anyone.

The tales he told when he returned to the motel were always salacious. If Sam noted his recent penchant for taking frequent showers, he didn't say anything. And their life-or-death lifestyle was a handy distraction from heart-to-hearts.

After that chance remark in a bar, what Dean's heart would have told someone if it knew how was that there was hope. Even if it was only the smallest sliver. Or rather, not so much on the sliver side.


	2. Chapter 2

Girls had always told Dean that he had a nice body. But now he looked at himself critically in the mirror every chance he got, and there was just no comparison. He was toned, more or less, not round. There was little to hold onto in the back, if you were looking for that sort of thing.

Evidently Cas was, because after Sam's observation Dean realized that every girl he'd seen the former angel go home with had well-placed curves. He'd seen his friend slip his arm around the flavor of the evening and let his hand linger in the small of her back, in that particular hollow made by a rounded bottom.

It was just physiology, as Cas said a million times. He couldn't blame the poor guy for getting his kicks however he could get them. The new human was still figuring out what goes where. Dean's birds and bees lesson from way back when Cas first incarnated haunted him now with the "here's how tab C goes in slot A" lesson about the other way he could get with girls.

Now, imagining Cas trying out that lesson with his latest female conquest caused Dean endless hours of masturbatory misery as he imagined Cas' explorations into that gloriously naughty place.

It might not be so painful if Dean hadn't been in Cas' position so many times before and knew that there would always be another girl's body to discover. Dean still dug chicks, but something had happened when Castiel went from being a meat puppet directed by an electron cloud and became Cas con Carne. To know that each hair on his arm was connected to a nerve that mainlined into him, to graze the back of his neck in the middle of a fight and know that he felt that, not through several jacked-up nerve connections and across another life form, but he felt it—

Dean couldn't bounce back from that.

The word "bounce" seared at his awareness and he kicked himself for even thinking it. Knowing that Cas was at this moment underneath some floozy who was bouncing her way to ecstasy on top of the brand-new, very curious human—it was an image that Dean played over and over in his mind until gradually the head thrown back in gluttonous pleasure had short hair instead of long, Cas' hands were sliding down from muscular shoulders and a broad back to a narrow waist that ended in…

Hips that Cas was cupping with total absorption. In the daydream, Dean was always looking back and watching the pleasure he was able to give Cas. The throaty voice of the ex-angel as he gave guttural approval to their movements made a totally alien whimper well up in Dean's throat. No chick had ever made him whimper, but the vision was always replete with coos and pleas coming from a Dean that he could scarcely recognize as himself.

After comparing his physique to every woman and man he saw, Dean was getting somewhat self-conscious. He wasn't flabby by any means, but he didn't have that all-over good shape that guys who worked out did, that Sam had because he did his pull-ups and what not every morning, unfazed by Dean's heckling from under the covers as the older brother clung to a few more moments of sleep.

Dean tried to join Sam a few mornings, claiming a desire to be more flexible in a fight, but the teasing Sam dished back was too much. So he went to a gym.

Transients as they were, it was easy to get a trial membership at a gym, Dean discovered, so he started making a point to go, rather than hit the bars, in whatever town they were in. "I'm getting a little chubby as I get on in years and the beers are going straight to my gut," Dean explained away this new habit of his. Through much repetition, he was able to make Sam see fat that wasn't there, and Dean was left to his healthier lifestyle with the minimum of ribbing.

Just because you can't have the one you want, it doesn't mean you can't make yourself more worthy of them, he reasoned as he began eating vegetables other than potatoes and went into withdrawal from the trans fats that must have been gluing his system together.

Dean was actually losing weight, not what he wanted at all, so after a workout session he hit the shop in the gym's lobby where you could buy unpronounceable things that claimed to bulk you up or thin you out, as you chose.

"Hate to break it to you, friend, but that's not going to do what you want," a voice said over his shoulder.

"It's not going to turn me into Schwarzenegger within a month?" Dean asked, turning around with protein powder in hand to see who was talking to him.

A guy a couple inches taller than Dean, maybe 6' 2", was smiling at him in a friendly way. "No, take it from someone who knows, I've tried a lot of this stuff, and some of it has an ingredients list a mile long. The natural route worked a lot better for me than the unnatural way." He allowed himself to be evaluated the way guys could only do in a gym.

"You look pretty cut," Dean observed. His eyes got caught on the man's backside. It was a majestic bottom, firm, round, everything that Dean had been wishing he could try out on Cas.

"I have my methods, and you can see the results," the man said, and Dean blushed a little. "Hey, no sweat, let's have something at the juice bar and I'll tell you how I reached my fitness goals."

A year ago, Dean was thinking, it would be totally ridiculous for him to be drinking carrot juice, in the first place, and in the second, talking about bodies with another man. He was so eager he bought the guy's juice.

"Thanks. I'm Tim, by the way."

"Dean. I'm actually super-careful about what I put in my body," he said, belatedly thinking that this might be a demon or some other creature trying to poison him. "If it was made over a cauldron, for instance, I'd rather take my chances with the chemicals over there."

"I'm related to one of the witches who was burned at Salem," the guy said with disarming candor. "In my family we've always known that spells and things are real enough to cause real trouble. I wouldn't even like touching a Ouija board and you can't drag me into a fortune-teller's."

The full force of his hunter instincts trained on the guy for a moment, and then Dean laughed despite himself. "Then maybe we have a little more in common than I would have thought, because my family has its own traditions about not playing around with weird shit."

They smiled at each other until Tim continued, "I saw you, up there in the exercise room. Tonight and the last two nights. You seem really unhappy with your appearance, because your eyes are glued to the mirrors watching other people or looking at yourself, and you're not getting off on it either way."

Dean was relieved that his wandering eye didn't mean he'd have to admit to any particular allegiance, because he had no idea which team he batted for these days. "I'm not here looking to pick anyone up," he asserted.

"No, I know you're not. You remind me of myself about a year ago, and I was too insecure to go after what I wanted." The man made a soothing gesture. "In my case, guys, but it's none of my business where your tastes lie."

Dean let out a sigh of relief that he wouldn't have to field any awkward come-on and focused on his curiosity. "Then what is this natural remedy? Is it safe? Is it legal?"

"Completely," Tim said, and Dean's conman sensors told him the guy was telling the truth. "It's a combination of Chinese herbs and a few targeted yoga exercises that produce results much faster than the machines up there."

They discussed the details for a while when Dean's hunter instincts kicked into action. "Why are you doing this for me? What do you want in return?"

"I don't want to take anything from you," Tim said. "I want to give something to you, and if you want me to swear an oath to that effect I will. If I can give someone else a little boost in self-esteem, that's what I want to do, and it's not like you need a lot of improvement." Dean looked doubtful. "Well, if you're still interested, you can pick up your herbal mixture from this address," he slid a card across the table. "Tomorrow. This is kind of a time investment on my part, so I do ask that you commit to two months of the regimen. Is that a problem?"

Two months? Dean had been planning on blowing town the next day. He couldn't remember the last time he spent a month anywhere.

"No, that won't be a problem at all," he said.

When a sated-looking Cas met him and Sam for breakfast the next morning, Dean was able to tell them with relief, "Why don't you two go on without me? I've got some stuff I need to do on my own, but I'll see you up the road a little ways."

The crappy thing about it being the three of them now was that Dean was subjected to two sets of probing eyes looking for the latest way he'd started to crack up.

"You're troubled," Cas said with that directness he hadn't lost yet.

"Are you having a mid-life crisis?" Sam demanded.

"No, I just looked over at Cas the other day," Dean's voice caught for a moment, "and realized that there's finally somebody else watching your back, Sammy, so I can take a break for a minute."

Sam looked hurt while Cas seemed touched. "I would be honored to be entrusted with such a responsibility," he said, and Dean stood up hurriedly before he threw his heart at Castiel's feet for being so damn exactly what he needed.

"Great, it's settled, then. I was going to go out for a while, so when you guys clear out the room make sure they don't think we've all checked out. Here, take the car." He tossed the keys and left.

There was no way for him and Sam to go their separate ways without somebody getting all in a twist over it, but this time it wasn't Dean. He had a pleasant walk to the address on the card, which turned out to be a Chinese restaurant that ran a small shop full of smelly medicinal herbs marked only in Chinese.

"You're Mr. Dean?" the elderly woman asked in a thick accent. She had a pile of jars ready on the counter.

"Yeah. If you wouldn't mind, could you tell me which thing is which?" He pulled out the instructions Tim had written down for him and she helped him mark each jar in a way that he could follow the regimen set by his new friend.

Everything was very reasonably priced, considering that it was a month's supply. Dean took the long way back to the motel to be sure Cas and his brother were gone. Eagerly, he ran some hot water through the coffee maker and dissolved the first set of powders. When it was cool enough to drink, he choked down the ill-tasting brew and decided to get a workout in at the gym before meeting Tim for his first training session.

He actually enjoyed lifting weights and such this time, focused less on the fact that he felt unloved and unlovable, and more on the movements. He had just enough time to jump in the shower before going downstairs to meet Tim in the lobby. While in the shower, Dean surveyed his body again with a new hope. How would Cas know he was a pre-programmed heterosexual if he was new to having a body and he never tried being with a dude? Dean was resolved to make that a more attractive proposition.

"You look chipper. The medicine doesn't take effect that quickly," Tim said from downstairs. "I'm glad you've put aside your fears that I'm some kind of serial killer because I've invited you back to my place for your first lesson."

"This guy just radiates health," Dean was thinking and then wrested himself back. "I haven't told you that much about me, but let's just say I know how to handle myself," Dean smirked.

"We'll see about that. I'm going to make you hurt in places you never knew you had," Tim warned.

And he did. Dean had never done anything remotely like yoga, and Tim had him in positions he didn't think a man could get in.

Then that thought led to the idea of expanding his manly positions with Cas, and Dean stumbled in the pose he was keeping with shaking muscles.

"Whoah, there, this is supposed to be good hurt, not bad hurt," Tim cautioned. "Let's take a break." And he cheerfully prepared some more disgusting tea in such a natural manner that Dean could only think Tim hadn't seen him looking at that perfect behind.

They met almost every day. Tim was a graphic designer who worked from home, so unless he had some crazy deadline he knocked off in early afternoon. There was something about the guy that made Dean comfortable despite himself—anyone who asked too many direct questions got off on the wrong foot with a hunter and stayed there. But this guy didn't ask him anything. Dean told him the minimum—that he was on the road a lot with his brother and sometimes somebody else, it was kind of an undercover thing and so he couldn't talk about it further than that.

"Hence the lone wolf persona," Tim said one day after a session that was a little easier. "Making yourself impossible to pin down is a great way to avoid having to figure out what you want or whether to go get it."

"If you're so confident about yourself, why is there only one toothbrush in your bathroom?" Dean snapped. Actually, he'd wondered about that. At the gym he'd seen his friend's body followed by many roving eyes, but Tim had never given anyone a second glance.

"I've played around plenty, enough to know that that's not what I want," Tim said with that open way he had.

"I kind of know what you mean," Dean returned in kind, thinking of his skirt-chasing days just behind him. Then his preoccupation returned. "Do you think that I'm bulking up at all?"

"For me, it happened all of a sudden," the other man said. "You just have to be patient."

When Dean wasn't having his training sessions at Tim's place, he tried to be doing some healthy activity that would take his mind off Cas. That's why he took a few days' work a week from a body shop and traded some occasional help at a rifle range for a couple hours shooting out his frustrations. He would still see guy-girl couples together and get a twinge of pain. Why did he have to be the one to have the strictly-heterosexual blinders ripped off his eyes at this point in his life, when the guy who admitted to having feelings for him all along couldn't muster up the slightest bit of physical attraction at all?

He was learning a lot of things from Tim, but maybe the biggest thing was that ass. It wasn't big, like freakishly huge, it was just, there. It was so perfectly sculptured, so eminently do-able, that Dean would swear some of the guys ogling it at the gym weren't even gay. Dean was sure that before everything changed for him, if an ass like that caught him in a drunken weak moment, he would've taken the secret of that brief encounter to his grave. So far, Dean himself had felt no interest in other men, and that included his yoga instructor, but that one feature made fine masturbatory fodder, either imagining screwing it or visualizing it as his ass being screwed. There were a few things that were constant in life, he liked to think, and a behind like a work of art transcended gender boundaries.

Or so Dean's considerable time investment was supposed to prove.

Their second month was drawing to a close, and Dean was enjoying the structure and the company so much that he was considering putting off joining Sam and Cas for a little while longer. All this preparation for seeing Cas again was a safer kind of excitement than actually facing his wingless wingman. He went to sleep on a Tuesday, thinking he would call Sam in the morning and tell him he was still off duty.

On Wednesday morning, Dean woke up, groggier than usual since he'd started his healthy living, and walked into the bathroom.

He dropped his toothbrush on the floor.

The reflection that looked back at him from the dingy motel mirror was of Dean, all right, but Dean and then some.

Dean had given up studying his reflection because he was trying to be in the present-the mental training that Tim believed was an important part of wellness. At some point the definition his chest had always had become two sculpted pecs. He had a washboard stomach you could cut yourself on, but the best part was below the belt.

He didn't just have two nice, polite pauses between his back and his legs. He had twin show-stoppers begging to be lingered over. What he saw had him fascinated, though the rest of his body wasn't sure if it wanted to do what it saw in the mirror or have it done by someone else.

Dean spent the rest of the day inside imagining what he was going to do with his new feature. "Yeah, Sam, I'm going to be joining you real soon," Dean said happily over the phone that evening, interrupting one of his brother's periodic updates. "I only have a couple things to take care of first."

Then Dean went over to Tim's a little later than their usual time. His friend hadn't replied to his voicemail telling him he'd seen progress and then some, but depending upon his workday, that wasn't unusual.

Which was why Dean was surprised to see a note with his name on it stuck in the grate covering the front door to Tim's building.

"Dear Dean," it said. "I was called away for a death in the family, and I plan on working from my parents' home for the next little while. If you have to move on before I get back, it was a pleasure to know you and train with you. It's all about mindset, you'll come to see."

Dean checked his voicemail and found a text message he didn't notice coming in that said much the same. Dean made a mental note to make a condolence call at some point before he left. But he was too excited to see Cas again to think very much about this person who had shared his fitness secrets with him. He rushed over to the Chinese restaurant and finally communicated to the herbalist that she should give him as much of his medicine as she had, and send the next ration to a PO box that was in the direction he was heading.

He wasn't sure if the effects were permanent or not, and Dean was taking no chances that he might let his new body slip through his fingers before he tried to slip it through Cas'.

Then Dean went shopping. He bought new jeans and underwear—one kind in a looser cut to minimize his new feature, and another kind he would surely never have the courage to wear. Then he went somewhere far outside the mall and had the most mortifying 10 minutes of his life buying something he'd never considered purchasing, much less using on himself.

He had to. It was like he was on fire. He wanted Cas so terribly he burned with desire, and this one implement was needed to get to the places he couldn't easily reach. Dean looked at himself every chance he could, and he paid attention to the avid eyes tracking his movements enough to decide: with eyes closed, Cas wouldn't care what gender he was. Dean felt this glow of health he'd never experienced with his fast-food diet, and people seemed to reflect his extra wattage.

Ever since Dean was gobsmacked by Cas' humanity he was never sure if he wanted to make his fantasies happen. Each sexual possibility between the two of them was both titillating and terrifying. Did he really want Cas to, you know, go there? He'd never even touched himself there.

But apparently, Dean did wanted to, because he crossed that taboo pretty far before he'd remembered this was something every straight guy should view as the ultimate indignity.

The browser history on his phone quickly filled up with sites filling in all the nuts and bolts of having sex with somebody else that had nuts. He read with a mixture of arousal and alarm about everything his body could do, if only the one he had set his heart on wanted to do him too.

If a lifelong heterosexual could be enjoying these actions this much, then a heterosexual for a couple months could, Dean reasoned.

It took several more days of imagining Cas in the place of plastic before Dean wrested himself away from the town that might have solved all of his problems. He made his way to where Sam was and met him in a bar.

"You look—healthy?" Sam said, studying his brother's face.

"I went on a cleanse. Now I'm sound of mind and body, Sammy." He looked around, barely daring to hope. "Where's Cas?

Sam looked sheepish. "He took good care of me, but I didn't do as good a job taking care of him as I should have. It's hard to remember he can get hurt."

"He's hurt?" Dean felt the panic in his voice but hoped Sam didn't.

"It's nothing major. A sprained ankle, the ER said. They had a field day looking at some weird things about his bones in the x-ray. I guess you can tell he didn't grow them naturally."

"That's good. Listen, brother, I've been hitching for days. I'm dying to lay flat on my back."

Sam looked disappointed. "Oh, I was hoping I could tell you more about how things have been going on our end." He made no move to get up. "And I kind of have a waitress I've been flirting with."

"Tomorrow morning, Sammy. Once I get this kink of out of my back." Dean stretched illustratively and checked to see if his brother was checking his new contours. Sam didn't appear to focus on any one part of his body during the few minutes in which he made small talk about yoga and the person who taught it to him while his brother dropped him back at the motel.

Dean walked through the door with his heart pounding. Cas looked up with that hilariously intent expression he wore whenever he watched television. "Dean, it's so good to see you. You look very well."

"Thanks, Cas, I've been trying to live right for a change and it seems to suit me."

"See you guys later," Sam said and the door shut.

Dean sat awkwardly down on the other bed. "Listen Cas, you know that thing I asked you not to bring up? I'd like to talk about it."

Cas slowly looked over at him and turned off the remote.

"My explorations with women have bothered you, and for that I am sorry," he said with that sincere growl in his voice. "But as I told you, it has nothing to do with what you and I share. You have gotten closer to me than anyone has ever cared to in all these many years, simply by being you, Dean. No one has ever challenged me, how do you say, gotten under my skin like you, and I'm discovering that without that investment, everything else is only skin-deep."

"But," Dean began and then mentally added a hopeful 't'.

"But my body has a mind of its own. While you were gone I decided I was being selfish, asking you to tolerate this situation. If you prefer, I can stop traveling with you and your brother. You'll never see me again, if that would make this easier, though I would miss you a great deal."

"That's everything we've already said before," Dean said urgently. "I think we've been looking at this all the wrong way."

His hunter's reflexes had the blindfold tied before Cas could react.

Dean placed Cas' hands on his backside. He posed there very still, letting the other man explore, knowing that he would ruin the illusion by saying anything. All that mattered was when he looked down and saw the other man's clear interest.

"This is very arousing," he heard startlingly close to his ear. Cas had grasped onto Dean's waist and scooted up as well as he could with his ankle. He felt the hands try to pose in various places before settling on the small of his back.

He felt Cas' hot breath in his ear. He was just thinking of the small tube he had been optimistic enough to carry in his jeans now on the floor. "Wait, I have," he began.

"Oh," Cas said regretfully, laying back suddenly and taking off the blindfold. "I am sorry." They both watched his excitement wilt. He reached for Dean's face and forced him to turn his shame to meet him in the eye. "That was everything I wanted it to be for us. Everything I wish these casual trysts were to me."

"And then you realized who you were doing it with," Dean said bitterly.

"And then my physiology got in the way, something it does irritatingly often." He gestured to his elevated ankle. "I used to exist as pure thought, and many of those thoughts were for you." He laid a hand on his friend's arm. Dean knew Cas too well to think he was lying, and that made it worse, somehow, that he did care but just not enough.

Cas still had his hand on the arm. "You know, maybe there are things we can do. I was finding your body hair somewhat distracting. What if you got rid of it?"

"I'll take a bath in Nair if that's what you want. I'll do anything you ask me to," Dean said in a craven tone before he could stop himself. He saw Cas studying him. "One of the things I discovered in my time off is that I really want to do this with you."

"I assumed you were having your usual liaisons at night," Castiel said stiffly.

Dean's heart jumped a little. Cas was jealous! "Dude, I haven't wanted to get within ten feet of anyone else. Nobody does it for me these days but you," he said on a falling note while the rest of him was doing anything but.

"That's how my heart would look, if you could see it," Cas admitted. "This is also painful for me, don't you see, to be limited by flesh not corresponding to what I feel?"

Dean reached out tentatively and squeezed his shoulder in what he thought was a natural manly way, until he remembered he wasn't wearing any pants. He scrambled back into his new jeans.

"How did you manage to make yourself so—sexy?" They exchanged a timid glance. "You look very well, in every way," Cas said as they settled back against the pillows. Dean turned on the TV in case Sam came home early, and then explained the herbal regime, letting the other man smell the herbal powders and even demonstrating some yoga poses.

"I don't have all the senses I used to, but these all seem to be substances that have been used medicinally for centuries." Dean sighed with relief, because he'd not done too much research before he started taking them, and he wasn't about to stop. "Maybe I should take them too. I could use something to make my body stronger." He looked at his ankle.

"No," Dean said, taking the sack of jars away from Castiel. "Don't change. I like you like this."

They heard the key in the lock and Dean sprang to the other bed.

"Don't you two look cozy," Sam remarked. "I guess I get the floor because I don't have a bad back or a bum ankle."

"I am pretty comfortable, what about you, Dean?" Cas replied with a glance at the other bed.

"I feel better than I have in a long time—lying on soft bed," he hastened to add.

In the middle of the night he woke to Cas' open eyes gazing at him from the other bed.

They looked at each other for a long time and it was such a charged mixture of hope and hopelessness and, in his case, longing, that he was amazed his brother slept through it, or that he went back to sleep himself.

"Damn, Dean I need to get on that stuff," Sam said when his older brother easily bested him in pushups and then went through his morning yoga poses before having his first mug of tea. "You're never in a good mood in the morning."

"What can I say, clean living helps keep your priorities straight," and he twitched his lip in Cas' direction at that. "I'm dying to kick some demon ass. How's the ankle?"

The ex-angel scratched his hair, which was sticking up in all directions, and tested his foot on the floor. "I think things are getting better. I'm willing to bet they can."

In the coded language they were developing in Sam's presence, Dean was sure Cas had just said he was wiling to give it a try, the two of them.

Breakfast was full of the pleasure-pain of their eyes skittering away from each other. The same nervousness they had when Cas had become fully human but they hadn't learned that they couldn't be together.

It wasn't easy to arrange time for it, but Dean showed up at the waxing studio full of resolve. "I'm afraid we don't take full-body walk-ins," the woman said, but he claimed some last-minute modeling job and after looking him over good, the woman relented.

Usually Dean dealt with the discomfort of getting stitched up by imbibing a fifth of whiskey, and he wished he had thought to bring one, because it hurt. It hurt something terrible. It hurt so bad he forgot to be embarrassed about having his junk yanked around by a 50-something Filipina lady named Lupe.

"Good luck," the receptionist said when he emerged on shaky but smooth legs.

"Thanks," he said. "I've got a good feeling about this one."

By the time Cas showed to their agreed meeting, his nether regions had stopped aching from the wax and were now throbbing with need.

"See, I've been looking forward to seeing you," Cas pointed to some amount of excitement.

"That's great, because you won't believe how smooth is smooth."

He turned out all but one of the lights and had everything set up by the bed. "You sit here and I'll do the rest."

Cas let the blindfold be tied around him and then Dean began the delicate business of turning him on.

He let Cas explore his roundness while being methodically stripped. When Cas felt the smooth legs being rubbed against his, he gasped. Dean bit his lip. He didn't expect his companion to touch any of his male features, obviously, but that need was pushed to the side. They clumsily enacted some of Dean's fantasies with Cas' hands focusing on his new and improved contours.

"This is, it's hot as I don't know what," Cas still wasn't good with the metaphor. Dean giggled a little but it was apparently a unisex sound because the other man laughed a throaty laugh of conquest. Comments like "This is the most satisfying sexual stimulation I have yet experienced" alternated with porno-derived things like "That's right, take it."

Finally it finished in an explosion on Dean's rear, who was surprised to see Castiel ripping off the blindfold at the crucial moment. "Lay down," Cas ordered and then fit his body behind him, one hand exploring his curves again. "You can talk now," Castiel whispered in his ear. "Was it good for you?"

Dean whimpered and that raspy voice chuckled.

"I was a little surprised you took the blindfold off."

"It occurred to me with my last few operative brain cells that a man is never more malleable than the moments before, during and after orgasm. It seemed wise to try and acclimate in that moment."

"Acclimate. Gee, that makes it sound spontaneous." Some of Dean's afterglow dissipated.

"How's this for spontaneous?" Cas reached around and caressed Dean's chest. "We're going to be all right, Dean. I have never felt this sensation of—rightness—that I do now. This was a wonderful evening." There was a silence. "Was this not what you'd hoped? Did I hurt you in some way?"

"Only in a good way," Dean said, pressing himself backwards. "I can't help but imagine you picturing one of these chicks you've banged while you're doing me, though."

Castiel turned Dean to face him. "I don't know how to explain what an angel's perspective is like, but I've told you that we don't, I didn't, see gender. Not as the most salient characteristic, anyway. I met you as Dean, a sentient being, and that's still how I see you, how I mate with you."

"'Mate,' damn, that's dirty, Cas," Dean said with relief. He was disappointed when Cas reached over and turned out the light.

"This may be our only chance to do this for a while," Castiel said wrapping himself around Dean from behind. "I have often watched you sleep and wished I could do so with you." The fingers felt for his lips and then Cas carefully placed his mouth for the biggest shock of the evening, a kiss.

Dean let himself go at this longed-for contact and felt Cas pull away.

"The stubble is a little unnerving. Hold still."

Dean let himself be kissed as he had never surrendered his mouth before. It made him instantly hard once more.

"You just may have solved an age-old philosophical debate," Cas murmured as they were drifting.

"That at least some dudes can pick up the bat for the other team one day without any warning?"

"No, you have heard of Archimedes' fulcrum?"

"'R. Kelly's fuck'em'? That sounds like some kind of sex toy," he mumbled into the pillow.

"As it happens, it may be. 'Give me a place to stand and I will move the world'?" The hands gripped his hips. "What seemed as though it could not be shifted is more mutable than you would think, from the right standpoint." The whisper filtered into Dean's ear in the darkness. "A fulcrum is no more than a place," the fingers traced lightly, "Where force is shifted into a different direction." And the full force of Castiel's male body flowed around Dean's as if it belonged there.

They fell asleep, Cas' leg thrown over his.

He felt Cas come awake with a start next to him, pushing back with some force, and then gently extricate himself from the pose their bodies had attained overnight. He held his breath until he came back from the bathroom.

"If I promise not to talk, will you come back to bed?" Dean asked, still feeling Cas pushing him away roughly.

"Apparently, Jimmy had never woken up naked and in bed with a man, and his conditioning had not prepared him for it," Cas said. "I found last night very instructive in the possibilities for reprogramming the brain." He saw Dean's eyes still on him. "That is to say, properly managed, it was hot as hell."

"I'm ready for more," Dean said throatily.

"Sam will be back soon, and it would be very difficult to explain our situation."

"He's already suspicious about my health kick," Dean agreed, gathering his clothes.

"Shave and I'll kiss you," Cas said invitingly.

Dean leapt into the bathroom and forced himself to shave slowly enough not to cut himself. He was rewarded by a careful kiss that nonetheless took him apart and put him back together. He took a chance and raked his fingers through Cas' hair, who responded by palming his backside, though he drew back when he felt Dean's solidity pressing against him.

"I'm sorry—" Cas began.

"Don't be. I'll shave five times a day and wear a chastity belt if that's what it takes to get one of those," Dean panted.

Cas' hand stopped him from gathering up his toiletries. "Let me look at you. There is something quite—interesting in your face when we are intimate. I like it very much, this air about you that seems to be developing as we get closer, but I don't yet understand what it is."

Dean wasn't sure either, though he would develop suspicions over time. All he was sure about at that moment was that what was keeping him and Cas together was a lot more solid than air.

When Sam came back, Dean engineered a moment so that he was loading the car and Sam and Cas could talk about him and otherwise analyze the Chinese medicines he'd left out on purpose. It was a good time to send a delayed thank you to Tim. He gave what he hoped was a not-too-gushing summary of how things were going for him and sent the text message. Shortly thereafter, he received and encouraging text from his yoga instructor, telling him not to slack off after beginning to see results.

He was sitting in the driver's seat when the other two came back from turning in the key. "Everything ship shape?" he asked, trying not to smile too wide.

"Absolutely," Sam said, in a tone that said he'd not found anything but hadn't quit looking by a long shot.

There followed two weeks of nothing but fighting, ganking and passing out from exhaustion. Every time their bed rotation had either Dean or Cas taking the floor, they exchanged a rueful smile, neither of them averse to sharing a bed now, though the closeness was not without its dangers. They had a chance for a few post-shave stolen kisses, and Cas slid his hand over Dean's ass every chance he got, but there wasn't a chance for more.


	3. Chapter 3

When his brain briefly took command over his rowdy nether regions, Dean was formulating a plan, and when Sam and Cas were off on a fact-finding assignment one day, Dean used one of the contacts he'd found during his ultra-top-secret research into the fetish community.

"That's very easy to do. No, it shouldn't take long," the reassuringly bland voice said when Dean finally made the call. "We're not busy early in the day. How's 1:00?"

Dean was there with everything he needed along with a bundle of nerves and excitement he couldn't quite untangle. That the erotic photography studio was just an office in an office building was a little anti-climactic, so to speak. There was a no-nonsense receptionist, a bed whose sheets were removed from a plastic package before his eyes, a large bowl of condoms, a few props, and a conspicuous odor of disinfectant.

"A lot of people don't want their faces on video, but it's a shame to leave out so much of your body," the photographer said, his eyes appreciating every inch of the hunter who'd explained his requirements.

Cameras were set up to capture him from behind and from the side, but the windowless room only had lights pointed on his back, rear, and legs—all the parts of him that weren't distractingly male.

Feeling utterly foolish, Dean stripped off and prepared the instrument he'd brought with him. "Think of how much this is going to drive Cas crazy," he told himself encouragingly. This was just the thing to get Castiel thinking of him as unbearably hot but without a distracting gender. In no time at all he was too into it to care. He loved the idea of them being able to watch together as his body exulted in the motions.

"That's hot baby, but why don't we get a few shots with one of these?" the photographer threw a plastic package at him.

It took Dean a few moments to determine that the maze of stretchy fabric was a jock strap.

"A lot of guys like how this emphasizes their assets. Not that you need it," the man said. For a second, Dean was afraid that the strict no-touching policy he'd seen in the contract was about to be violated as he slipped on the article and looked in the mirror.

He looked so doable it was probably illegal in some states.

They spent a few more minutes getting all the footage he'd asked for, and then Dean cleaned himself up in the bathroom and came out to talk one more time with the proprietor.

"You didn't say if you wanted sound, but I think whoever you made this video for might want to hear you fantasizing about him."

"Oh, thanks," Dean said, blushing before the man who had seen him in total abandon. "How long will it take for you to edit it?"

"You'll have the secure download link in your inbox by Friday. It's only good for a week, so I recommend you save it someplace safe like password protected online file storage. Unless you're planning on making it public?"

"Nah, man, I'm not quite ready for that, but you may have really helped me out here. Thanks," and he passed over a cash tip in addition to the fee he paid by credit.

When the link appeared in his inbox, it was all Dean could do to wait for a private moment to watch it full size on the computer. In the meantime he'd taken the man's advice and bought some file space online rather than trying to hide it somewhere on the hard drive of Sam's computer. He waited until the other two guys were asleep and took the laptop to the bathroom. While the file was being transferred to its new home, he streamed it.

It was a turn-on like Dean had never experienced. He'd created the illusion that Cas was with him in the bed, and it was like watching the ex-angel of his desires possessing him. He was surprised to see that the photographer had slowed down certain portions so you could clearly see his anatomy moving in counterpoint with the rest of him shimmying in the half-light.

He looked like someone who was for rent, and cheap. A multi-angle view of his pert behind in motion was decadent enough. But the sound of him whimpering and crying out for more—the camera guy was right. It was out of the world. He didn't make it to the end before he succumbed.

"If you're just watching porn in there, can you do it somewhere else so I can take a leak?" Sam's voice grouched.

"A guy needs his privacy," Dean grumbled, computer in hand. He watched the rest of it on mute while Sam was in the john and then removed all trace of his surprise for Cas.

"Clear your schedule tonight," Dean hissed at Castiel in the morning. "I have a present for you."

Cas' face lit up in one of those surprising displays of emotion he had these days, and then it went blank again. "Your creativity has always impressed me," he whispered.

It took two days for them to get their time alone together, the job being what it was, and Sam clearly waiting for the other shoe to drop with Dean's transformation into a "stud-muscle health nut" as he'd heard Sam saying to one of his contacts over the phone.

Dean had been picking up chicks since he came back, and he'd even bedded a couple to see how he felt about it. Most of the time he was feeling bad for imagining the skin-to-skin contact was with someone different. The girl he got with the night after he saw the video received the full force of his arousal about sharing it with Cas.

Dean arranged to get separated from the group and waited for Cas to volunteer to find him. "What's the surprise?" Cas said when he walked into their assigned meeting place.

"That's you?" Cas grasped, watching the bouncing rear he'd queued up on his phone.

"Yeah, you'll like it even better when you can see it on a bigger screen." Dean said, studying his face. He was pleased to see that Cas took himself in hand after just a few moments of viewing. After a moment, Dean risked doing the same and they took care of business simultaneously.

"You're going at it like you need it," Cas said unexpectedly. They both jumped a little at the statement. "What I mean to say is, I find this tremendously alluring."

"Call me a slut, I don't care. I was thinking of you the whole time."

In the end, Castiel gave in before the video, Dean while watching Cas watching it.

Cas grabbed him for a much less cautious kiss than usual afterwards. Then he held Dean at arm's length. "There are so many things to discover about you, Dean. I can't believe that you would go to such lengths to please me. How did you find this service?"

Dean described the whole process of being filmed and saw Cas growing distant while listening. "The man was interested in you? You didn't feel tempted?" came the question.

If push came to shove, Dean wasn't sure what turned him on more—Cas, or Cas' jealousy.

"You've not been with a man since you realized it was of interest to you?" his companion pursued.

"No, though I get some interested looks from time to time. Actually, a lot more than that." He grinned at Cas' frown. "It would be really easy to do. The right glance a the gym or a bar." His hand crept over to Cas. "Some of these guys are pretty burly. It might be hot to have these muscular arms pinning me against the wall of one of the showers…"

He didn't really want that, but he liked making Cas jealous with the idea that Dean was going to open up shop to all comers and do it right in front of the former angel. He discovered his companion was so interested in the fantasy Dean was narrating that Cas didn't seem to be paying attention to whose hands surrounded his arousal. Dean added in a third guy to the scenario so that he was getting it coming and going.

Suddenly, Cas grabbed him, marking the man's back with his pleasure.

"Do you have it?" Cas asked throatily.

"What?"

"The instrument you used in the video. I would very much like try it on you."

"Uh, no, I was afraid of Sam catching me with it," Dean said, a little flustered and still aching for release. "I can get one, though, for next time."

A single digit was their stand-in for the moment, and soon Dean brought himself over the edge.

"You look so, perfect, lying there like that," Cas said as Dean panted in a heap. "Although one of those garments like you wore in the video might be even better."

It was much easier to roll up a jockstrap in a sock than hide a solid object, so Dean said, "I'll be wearing one when you least expect it."

Cas mashed his mouth against Dean's and didn't appear to notice that he his mouth was attached to a man's until he looked down and saw the evidence. "I just suddenly wanted to do that," he said, embarrassed, while he moved back a few inches.

"Do that any damn time you please," Dean gasped. "You should see by now that I want you, and I'm not too particular how I get it."

Cas gave him an appraising look and got dressed.

Several days later, Dean got the text from Cas and met him in the hotel room. "Who is that and why is he using our shower?" Dean inquired about the man who emerged from the bathroom with wet hair. Could Cas be getting with other men, but not him?

"This is Paul. He was cleaning up after I performed a ritual upon him." Cas smiled at the nervous-looking hunky man and then whispered to Dean. "He will use a condom regardless but I wanted to make sure that he was not lying about his health status."

"He a pro?" Dean asked suspiciously as he tried to figure out what the condom was for.

"Nah, man, I wanted to see that body up close and personal," Paul piped up while licking his lips at one body part in particular. "Sure I can't have a copy of that video?"

"No!" the other two men said together. "Now, I want you to make that story you told me come true," Cas instructed.

Dean wasn't sure how he felt about getting with this complete stranger, but having Cas stimulate himself while Dean was being hammered turned out to be deeply arousing. He gave in to passivity, existing only to be moved the way Castiel instructed.

"Take him. Take him in just that way," Castiel moaned.

Then Cas came over to join them and the fantasy Dean had created for his benefit was complete. "You can leave now," Cas said brusquely after they had all gotten off. "Here's some money for your trouble."

"Uh, okay," Paul said and was out the door with a few bills in hand.

"You," Cas breathed in Dean's ear. "You loved it." He received a mute nod. "Watching you being possessed by a man, it was—something I could watch many times."

"Hey, I'm not sure I want to be a pass-around-Patty, even for you."

"That's all right," Cas got up and went to a corner. "It may not have gotten everything, but this camera should have gotten some of our activities." He pried something off the molding. "Paul helped turn it on, but I trust you can figure out what to do with it?"

Dean was looking at the USB camera in his hand. "You want to watch me getting it?"

"Very much, Dean," the tongue snaked into his ear. "It pleases me more than you can know."

On the one hand, Dean was in seventh heaven. Many of the original rules for their intimacy were falling away. Cas wasn't shy about laying a casual hand on a particular part of him in public when they were away from Sam. They had both become accustomed to kissing in such a way that no stubble could ruin the moment. They were so turned on by each other that they couldn't get enough time for sex.

Or Dean's new definition of sex, which had little to do with a certain nearly-nine-inches of him. Cas wouldn't touch it, tried not to look at it. Or more like, through practice, it didn't exist for him. It was a weird feeling, having part of his body, and not just any part, permanently invisible. Dean was allowed to touch himself, but that sector of his body felt a little lonely and left out sometimes. He thought about the bliss that would be Cas' mouth taking notice of it and then pushed the thought away. Cas was far too interested in the rest of Dean.

Everything was the guy's first time, he told himself. The new human was eager to experience everything. He seemed to have lost a lot of interest in women—Dean couldn't bear to ask him whether the girls his lover sometimes took home were just for show, as Dean's were, but at least he had no doubt that the ex-angel's insistence upon condoms with everyone else had no exceptions. One of the things that was hardest for the new man to get used to was the idea that he could never be free of the microorganisms that used to be visible to his angel-eyes. The certainty that he was surrounded by dirt and disease at all times was something Cas was still working on tuning out.

His lover had made several guys suit up before making a third to their party. Cas loved getting a full view of what Dean looked like while the action ensued. The last time Cas had kissed him deeply while the guest of the evening took his due from Dean. "Oh, Dean," he said now sometimes when they were just the two of them, or not alone, Dean even had his chest stimulated once or twice and he loved looking down at Cas's mouth worrying at his him like that.

Then he always groaned too deeply and ruined the illusion. Rather, a carefully built reality, he chose to think of his intimacy. And the time they spent together just laying in bed together, or being in the car or tracking one of their many enemies, just the two of them—there's no way that wasn't real.

Now he understood that look of self-sufficiency real settled couples had. He could tell Cas anything, with none of the drama he shared with his brother. It was a calmer, deeper way of knowing someone. Of being known.

"You are the one, Dean," he heard one night while he sewed up a wound for Cas in the motel bathroom. One of them had saved the other and they'd both gotten their asses kicked in the process. "Only you would be able to see a way out of our difficulties." And then he grunted at the last stitch going in and took a pull off the bottle.

"You guys about done in there?" Sam called. "I've gotta wash off this grave dirt."

"In a minute," Cas hollered back. "I'm so happy, Dean. Being alive with you-imagining it got me through many dark moments."

"That's what I don't get," Dean remarked. "I thought we were basically like animals that talked and created nuclear weapons and shit. Why would you be into that?"

"No," Cas whispered, pulling him down to face level. "Humanity is far more mysterious than that. I see that now. We never know what it going to happen, so I wanted to make sure you understood, no matter what comes to pass."

Dean's heart sank. He had no idea what was about to happen but was sure he wouldn't like it.

"Guys?" Sam shouted.

"I'm gonna rush things the next time I stitch you up!" Dean yelled. "What's happened, Cas?" he asked in a subdued tone.

"I'm not sure, but your brother has been, how do you say, running a side game for a long time."

"You never thought to tell me this?"

"Since it is assuredly about either you, or you and me, it seemed the best way to prolong our time together was to keep silent." Castiel's fingers traced over Dean's face. "Is there anything you'd like to say to me?" Cas whispered.

"Call me your boyfriend." He mistook Cas' reaction. "Or don't."

"I should have thought that there would be human customs I would omit. This is important, of course." He took Dean's hand. "Dean Winchester, you are my boyfriend."

Feeling all of his past selves converging on this surreal moment and being surprisingly cool with it, Dean leaned up for a kiss and then withdrew from Cas' rigid body.

"Oh, yeah, I could shave," Dean rubbed his face as Cas backed away.

"Dean, there's someone waiting to see you, and I don't want him to run off." Sam pushed a guy into the bathroom. "Dean, meet Tim McCreedy."

The average-looking guy meant nothing to him. "He a case or something? Office hours are closed. You can come back in the morning. Not too early." The man was just standing there. "Oh, man, was that your girlfriend last night? She said she was single."

"Cut the crap, Dean. I know everything. More than you do. Starting with: Tim here, aka your friend Tim McCarthy, was no friend to you."

"Dean, I was so sure you were the right one," began a familiar voice.

"Tim? You look—"

"Normal. Unobtrusive. The opposite of a knockout. You can see why I would want to make a change, but you, Dean, you're already drop-dead gorgeous. And I was pretty sure you had someone in your life. It didn't seem like that big of a change, so it wouldn't upset the universe that much."

Cas put his hand on Dean's arm and left it there. "I think we should talk about this like civilized people." He grabbed the bottle from the bathroom counter and moved them all into the bedroom.

He sat down on the bed next to Dean, closer than they normally would when around others.

"For starters, everyone in Heaven, Hell and in between has known you guys have a thing for each other," Sam said.

Cas slung an arm around Dean. "You knew?" the elder Winchester said in horror to his brother. "And you knew he knew?" he said to Cas.

"I endured my share of teasing before I incarnated, so it doesn't surprise me that human circles noticed I was partial to you."

Sam shook his head sadly. "When Cas became human and nothing happened, I figured he needed to sow his wild oats, or maybe he'd made his move and you felt so bad about not feeling the same way you it had gotten between you. Or maybe you were into Cas all this time but you were still kidding yourself, Dean." The older brother frowned. "When you decided to up and leave, I thought you were trying to face things, if that's what you wanted."

"Dude, you make me sound retarded! It wasn't all simple like that. There's a lot of shit you don't know—" he looked over at Cas. "That we don't have to tell you. We deserve some privacy. Which is why Tim Mc-whatever, who I apparently didn't know at all, sitting smack in the middle of my life over there is really pissing me off."

The visitor shrunk a little bit further into the shrunken version of himself. "Let me explain."

"He got a hold of a good-luck talisman, made a wish, it went bad, and then he figured out how to pass it off on the unsuspecting hunter, which by the way should be an oxymoron," Sam summed up.

"You knew I was a hunter?" Dean was feeling seriously out of the loop.

"My Ouija board told me after I first fixed on you as a good candidate, yeah," Tim said sheepishly. "I really am related to one of the Salem witches. And I really am freaked out by Ouija and anything else beyond the Tarot cards that told me you were something a little more than a regular guy I met at a gym."

"And you said you wouldn't go to a fortune-teller," Dean recalled. "Because you'd screwed up your fate and wanted to get rid of it."

"Basically." Tim gave a perfectly normal smile.

"I had put together a few of these pieces," Cas said, his hand on Dean's leg. "My neural programming was changing at such a rapid rate. But I wanted it to," he rubbed the jeans-clad thigh soothingly.

Now Sam looked confused. "Jimmy was a poster boy heterosexual, making Cas into me but not in that way." Dean hated admitting this out loud.

"Which was one of the explanations I came up with," Tim put in. "All of your Tarot readings were hot with the love vibe, and yet something was in the way."

"So you guys knew how you felt about each other, and were scoring chicks every night? Why?" The younger brother paused. "You could have been a little more sensitive. Dean's gone through hell over you," Sam wheeled on Cas, belatedly comprehending Dean's behavior.

"What I feel to be two separate areas of my life are one and the same for Dean. I had offered to leave. But we've been looking for solutions."

"Can I tell my story now?" the stranger asked.

And Tim recounted his life as an average-looking guy who felt he'd never lived up to the looks-focused gay circles he tended to frequent. He was considering plastic surgery, when it occurred to him that the white magic talents he'd picked up from his family could be used to help him become the man he wanted to be.

"I found out about this stone that if you said the right charm over it would grant a wish. Naturally, I wanted to be hot."

"You were smoking," Dean agreed, and then realized the past tense was insensitive.

"Everyone else thought so," Tim agreed. "I was ecstatic at first, meeting guys I'd had my eyes on for ages but who'd never given me a second look."

"How is that bad?" Dean interjected. "Me getting fit has been nothing but good for me, for us," he leaned into Cas.

"It won't be," Tim said with a nervous glance at Sam. "I mean, I thought it might be better for you, because you were used to being attractive and probably had someone who already loved you, meaning there was no chance people would turn you into an object. You couldn't tell because of the temporary antidote I'd been taking so that people would stay the hell away from me. Either most guys are creeps or they become creeps when they're with someone too hot to be real. No one would fall in love with me for me, and my life was worse than ever. And then it got so I couldn't walk down the street without getting assaulted." He grimaced. "Sorry if I put you through any of that."

The word "object" clicked something into place for Dean and Cas, because they exchanged a look laden with all the shared trysts they were having. "Honestly dude, don't sweat it. We're all into it," Dean said, blushing, and then recoiled from Sam's disgust.

"Listen, whatever this curse-that-I-don't-think-is-really-a-curse is, it makes Cas more into me. In the way that we both want." He offered his mouth and Cas took the opportunity to take his breath away. He scowled at his brother for staring. "We're working against this Jimmy dude, who was apparently a prude. If he knew this was going to be an issue, he would've figured out somebody else's body to model his after, wouldn't you, Cas?"

"I have regretted my short-sightedness every day." The men gazed at one another.

Sam looked thrown for a moment. "Regardless guys, this is going to go south. The two of you have been like zombies for a couple of months already, running off at odd times and thinking about anything but hunting. It's dangerous in more ways than one, and both of you should know better than trying to controvert the natural order of things. Dean, you go back to being your regular self, which is still the hotter brother, don't think that all the girls don't tell me so," Dean was surprised at this surrender of an oft-contested title. "And you guys work it out some other way. I mean, Dean, you do realize you look exactly like you did in high school, which was the last time you were really into working out."

"Dude, I didn't have a—, there's no way," Dean disagreed.

"You had an everything. This is all a confidence thing for you, Dean. All of this unexpected stuff with Cas has you all freaked out, and it's made you self-conscious where you have no reason to be, so you're trying to recapture something you never really lost in high school. Back then, you were in excellent shape because being a jock was the easiest way to get through school without anyone noticing that you didn't understand the classwork." Dean made a disgusted noise and looked at the visitor, not wanting to go into this with someone outside the family.

"All I'm saying is, keep doing your yoga and drinking those herbs, which were just for kidney function and stuff. I checked right off. You and Cas can make it happen. There's no need for a curse to keep you together—he's dug you from the get-go, remember?"

"You made me wait around for two months because you wanted me to think I'd earned my muscles," Dean suddenly put together. Tim nodded.

"Yeah, I thought if you didn't know you were receiving a curse you would be less likely to act as if you were cursed. Plus, it's not like my transformation. My own mother didn't recognize me. You barely look any different now than when I first met you."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," Sam agreed.

A silent conversation that had been taking place between the couple concluded. "This is about a problem that is a little more than skin deep. Tim, I would like you to help illustrate our plight," Castiel said, gazing in the stranger's eyes. "Then Sam will understand what we are up against." Sam looked skeptical. "Go on."

Tim grabbed Sam and tried to kiss him.

"Dude, step back," Sam objected, wiping his mouth. "I like you, Tim, but you know I'm the Winchester totally not into that kind of thing." The other three men gazed at him sadly. "Oh."

"We're basically fucked, or not, without this curse," Dean said. "Sorry, Sam, but this is where we part ways."

Within five minutes, he and Cas were on the road.


	4. Chapter 4

It was wonderful. For a time.

Until that one night.

Determined to derive every bit of pleasure from Dean's body, the couple had taken to supplementing their own activity with visits to fetish bars. Neither of them trusted these complete and promiscuous strangers enough to get close to them, but Cas liked very much to watch one of the big men wield a piece of plastic upon his boyfriend. They made eye contact, Dean from the stage, Cas' eyes burning out from the audience, enjoying the moment then and anticipating the many times it would be relived in the future.

Until, unexpectedly, the guy tried to substitute something else for what he'd been using, to the crowd's hooted approval.

"I think you will find that is mine," Castiel said, leaping onto the stage and looking up at the man. It was as though he'd regained his angelic powers for a moment, he'd gotten to Dean's side so fast.

"Don't hurt him, Cas," Dean said, also back in the mindset of Cas being juiced up on angel energy.

The big man snorted. "You the boyfriend? You're not much to keep a hold of all that," he gestured to Dean's body. The crowd whistled.

Neither of them were sure who started it, but the ensuing melee had the veteran hunter using all his baddassery to keep back the would-be suitors who surged at him from out of the audience. It's hard to muster up the right attitude when you're only wearing a jockstrap, besides.

They finally fought their way to each other and out the door. Cas threw his jacket over Dean, who hadn't managed to rescue his clothes, and they ran to the car.

It was the only time Dean had ever let his boyfriend touch the Impala's steering wheel, but he'd rather surrender his Baby to Cas' shaky driving skills than drive her all trussed up like a tart. That would have been sacrilege.

"Sam has located the stone," Cas told him. Apparently had Tim sold it but provided the incorrect incantation, hoping to profit from it without allowing it to cause more harm. "It's in their possession. We can head there tonight, if you want."

Dean let his silence speak the end to something he didn't really want to let go. They went back to the motel and showered together because they couldn't wait to wash off the sleaze they'd been unable to feel until then.

Cas dried them both off, Dean very gently, and then put them into bed, naked, with the light on.

"How long have you known where it was?" Dean asked.

"Sam has been keeping me apprised, hoping we would see the error of our ways before anything happened."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"Were you ready to give this up?" Cas slid against the small of Dean's back.

"No. Let's stop going to these smutty clubs and we'll be fine."

"I'm not going to take that chance, Dean. Not with you. If something like tonight were to happen when I wasn't with you, there's a limit to how many sex-crazed men you can fight off." He turned Dean so that they were facing each other. The hunter instinctively moved a few inches away so that his maleness wouldn't be offensive.

"I love you, Dean. Too much to put you at risk for my own pleasure," he put a finger on the lips surrounded by five o'clock shadow they'd not thought to shave away. "Or yours."

The sob was out of Dean's throat so suddenly it startled them. "Why did shit have to happen this way?" he sniffled, "I let go of everything I thought I was, and I loved it, Cas, I freaking loved taking it from you and performing for you and us watching me on tape and—" while Dean was grinding his head into the crook of Cas' neck, he was unconsciously pressing his body, full-length, into its mate. "There's no way it was all this curse. I thought—I had a lot of hot dreams since you've been human."

Cas drew back to look him in the eye. "You wanted me to do even the-very bad things we've done-to you, even before?"

"Yeah, funny enough. It was like, thought one, 'I'm crazy about Cas,' thought two, 'I'd be the bitch.' Ain't life grand? I could've discovered at age 35 that I could play the piano or speak Swahili or something. It's not like I've shown any signs of those before, either."

"It is true that there are certain genes, but you should know that in each human cell there are many genes that remain turned off," Cas mused. "You seemed to have this color or frequency that would predispose you to same-sex attraction, yet it was not at all reflected in your life. These things happen. I have seen humans with the predisposition to be serial killers who were saints and vice versa. It's always fascinated me."

"You mean I was always gay and didn't know it?" Despite regularly screwing a dude for some time now, this total rewrite of his life freaked him out. "How could I not know?"

"All of your sexual encounters with women were real, Dean, you didn't imagine them. My guess is something," he stroked the backside that had given them both so much pleasure, "or perhaps someone provided the stimulus to activate your genetic tendency."

"So did Jimmy have this color or frequency or what have you?" Dean wanted to know.

"It's like living in a house for a long time, I've told you, you don't think to look at the wiring. I don't remember."

"Or if he did, I'm not enough to turn him on, on any level," Dean said bitterly.

"We have spent a lot of time in intensive reprogramming," the growly voice said into his ear. "I am optimistic that things are not as they were in the beginning. Let me prove it to you." There was an electricity surrounding them, perhaps the force of the curse they'd not been aware of as such until then. Every movement had a clarity about it as Cas stroked Dean's thigh and nuzzled in his neck.

They made love one last time with the curse holding them together, and Dean clung to his mate so closely that he didn't see the hand reaching around for the ignored inches that had long since resigned themselves to a lonely fate.

"Ssh," Castiel said. "Ssh." Dean looked back and his partner was studiously not paying attention to what his hand was doing, but their motions continued with the sharpness born of the knowledge that this might be the last time.

"Did the earth move?" Cas inquired, holding close the bundle of contentment that was all that was left of Dean after his orgasm.

"Yes. My God, yes."

They drove mostly in silence to meet Sam and Tim in Missouri.

"Why didn't you ever—" Dean asked once.

"You know my occasional problems with—performance?" the former angel replied. He watched the realization dawn on Dean's face. "Yes, every time I thought of doing this for you, everything stopped for us."

There was nothing to say after that.

The two weary men slid into a booth where the younger Winchester was already sitting with their witchy friend Tim.

No one said anything for a moment. "Uncle," Dean said reluctantly.

"Glad you came 'round while you're still in one piece," Sam said.

Dean's eyes widened at the idea of their fetish-club nightmare being relayed to his brother.

"We'd really like to take care of this matter without the chit-chat," Cas said evenly, putting a calming hand on Dean's arm.

"I don't really know what you propose to do, anyway," was Dean's complaint. "We're still back at square one, me saddled to a curse that's heading way south."

"That's easy," Sam beamed. "We'll transfer it to someone else the same way Tim passed it off on you."

Tim started detailing some complicated spell he'd worked but none of it seemed right.

"Have you gone dark side again?" Dean demanded of his brother. "You can't just go take a curse, ring somebody's doorbell and run away! What if a kid picks it up?"

"It's not contagious quite like that. As near as I can figure from my research, it's like The Red Shoes." Neither Dean nor Cas caught the reference. "You know, the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale where this little girl buys these flamboyant red shoes and tells her half-blind grandmother they're brown. As a punishment for lying her feet start dancing on their own accord and she has to cut them off?"

Dean was scandalized. He didn't want any of his body parts cut off, especially those.

"It's one of those poetic justice curses," Sam said. "You get what you want but then you don't stop getting it. This talisman is relatively secure," he patted his pocket. "Tim had to have a lot of determination to obtain both the stone and the charm that kicks it into action."

"And there's no off switch. I've tried." Tim withdrew a singed remnant of leather from his pocket. "I won't tell you how to pronounce this, but I got it straight from some Ouija sources you don't want to know about. This is what activates the stone. The antidote side was burned off centuries ago. I hit upon a way to sort of neutralize the effects but I can't keep myself in puppies and that's no way to live."

They all looked at the visitor quizzically but he just shuddered.

"If you're so tight with your Ouija board you must've known I was eventually going to figure it all out and come kick your ass into the next state," Dean said to Tim.

"Oh, I knew. Better yet, I knew you were Dean Winchester. Turns out you have a lot of frenemies in the great beyond who watch your life like As the World Turns. That's why I used a fake name and kind of went into hiding for awhile."

"What's a frenemy?" Cas whispered.

"Someone like Balthazar who wants to smite me most of the time but also kind of digs me too," Sam replied.

"He was very ambivalent about you," Cas agreed thoughtfully.

Dean was stuck on the image of his backside dancing away from him. "Guys! Can we focus here?"

"As I tried to tell you the last time we tried to talk about this, there's a reason why I didn't drive over to Montana and show Tim what I thought of his cursing you. Several reasons. One, he was aware of the danger and was—misguidedly—thinking he could eliminate it. And two, he's kind of got a gift. And that creativity pretty quickly put him on my speed dial since I picked him out of a list of Salem witch trial relations that wasn't too hard to get. We've tracked the stone passing through a few collectors' hands all this time."

"Then why didn't you perform this reversal spell on us against our will at any point?" Cas asked.

"Because it's not exactly a reversal spell. There isn't one," Tim interjected. "Plus, it took us awhile to find someone who might deserve a curse or two."

Dean looked doubtful, so Sam continued, "It so happens that right here in this city there's a pretty big branch of the KKK, or Aryan Whatevers. Their ringleader is the worst person in America that we could have direct access to."

"And some people say he likes kids," Tim put in, warming to the subject. "I should have thought of this to begin with. It's going to be epic."

"I don't mind thinking of this guy cursed, do you?" Sam asked the skeptical couple. "I'm going to enjoy it. This is based on Tim's brilliant idea."

"I suggested transferring it to the preacher who tried the beat out the gay method on me when I was a kid," Tim grinned.

"Wait, wait, wait, what if this guy wishes some terrible thing for every minority in a ten-mile radius? This is a terrible idea," Dean said.

"It's my wish, Dean. You got the very same thing I wished for," Tim tried to explain. "Some revolting man is going to be all ripped underneath his white robe for awhile. Then things start to turn bad."

Dean finally laughed. "All right. I'm in. Cas?" He turned to where the former angel had been very quiet.

"What is the KKK?" he finally asked. He listened to the explanation while nodding impatiently. "Might Dean and I have some time alone before you perform this spell?"

"Sure, Dean. Tim and I have some preparations to make." Tim got up to pay their bill. "I'm kind of sorry I threatened him so bad when we first came in contact. He's a stand up guy."

Their new acquaintance was less upbeat as he took his leave, meeting Dean's eyes only when he looked back for a moment at the doorway.

Together, Sam and Tim stole a beer bottle the white supremacist leader had been drinking from in a bar, much as Tim had used a straw that had some of Dean's saliva on it. They transferred the curse and came back to the motel, snickering over what lay ahead for the man.

"How do you feel, Dean?" Sam asked of the quiet couple.

"I feel fine," Castiel answered for both of them. And he did. They returned to hunting much as before, except two thirds of the trio now had some amount of attention for the fight.

At first Dean thought his brother must have been right, and that he had convinced himself he was unattractive in his old features, which were very similar to the ones he'd worn for months. He felt the same, knowing that Cas didn't seem to be going anywhere. Sam very kindly gave them the use of the room whenever they asked, and if they spent some time looking at the videos they'd made of Dean, this sort of thing had long been one of their activities together.

Gradually, however, Cas seemed less inclined to ask for use of the room, and when they did have privacy, spent more time looking at their videos than at Dean. "So what, this doesn't work for you unless you watch your favorite porn star first? I guess what's in front of you doesn't do the job by itself."

Cas tensed. "It appears that the conditioning wore off. As, I'm told, is natural in most operant conditioning. There must be a solution for it. I just haven't thought of it yet."

Dean pulled on his clothes. "Fuck this, Cas. For months I reshape my life around your needs, terrified that I'll say the wrong thing, that I'll say anything at all, and scare away your sacred hard-on. I am dying, do you hear me, dying for someone to touch me down there like it's not repulsive, to look at it like it's there, even."

"You think this has been easy, all these weeks, trying to get, not to mention keep, this arousal?" Cas lashed back.

Dean closed his eyes. He would have rather Cas physically slapped him, instead of weathering that particular remark. He opened his eyes. No apology seemed to be coming, but you can't apologize something like that away.

"I'm going to meet Sam," he said, gathering his things. "I need a drink."

They walked together in silence to the bar where Sam was tying one on. He sensed, rather than saw, Cas open his mouth. "If you say one word to me, Castiel ex-angel of Thursday, I swear to all that still is holy that I will cut you."

Sam welcomed his two companions where he had been hustling darts. "Hey guys, glad to see you." They all got a table and it took the younger brother about ten seconds to realize he was sitting next to two sets of nuclear warheads pointed at each other.

"Go ahead," Dean said, his quiet voice interrupting Sam's attempt to act like nothing was wrong.

"Go ahead what, Dean?" Sam stupidly asked.

"Castiel right there, he's been exchanging come-hither glances with that blond in the screw-me dress."

"No I haven't," Cas grumbled into his beer.

"Maybe I should—" Sam scooted his chair back.

"No, Sam. You stay put. Cas is going to get his itch scratched, easy as pie, and you and me, we're going to stay here, together, just the two of us, the way it's always been. Because I can rely on you-maybe only because of all the shit I've pulled you out of-I can rely on you, Sam, not to treat me like second-best." The vise-like grip of his older brother's hand on his arm was more than enough to keep Sam where he was.

"I have told you every possible way, Dean Winchester, that I have endured every smart remark, every lewd suggestion, from every entity ranging from the lowliest demon, all the way up to the top of the heavenly hierarchy, in reference to the great forbidden affection for you that I was helpless to hide," Cas said in a quiet voice. "Chalk it up to my eons of experience if you like, but I think what really separates us, you and me, is not a neural connection here or there. No, it's that I don't expect life to be perfect. I came into it fully aware that it would be messy and it would hurt and I would probably lose what was most important to me, because that's the way it works."

He stood up and leaned towards Dean's ear. "I want nothing more than to be near you, to share life in all its fragility and absurdity. Even this moment, I'm couldn't be happier, sharing this miserable instant with you because at least we're together. But it seems you'd rather a turn of events that is easy, and so you push me away. I won't deny you, Dean, since this is what you want."

Cas stalked across the bar and began making nice with the blonde.

"Damn, Dean, I don't want to get involved." Sam got them both a shot and tried to distract his brother with the hunter equivalent of small talk-who's trying to kill who, etc. "If he's not treating you right, Dean, I'll sock him one in a minute, you know that, don't you?" he finally said. "I don't need to get the blow by blow to realize Cas did something to hurt you. He could've been in the Heavenly Host or the Beatles for all I care, but that's no excuse for being a dick. It's all over your face."

Dean threw back another one, trying not to think of all the times that had happened, never to happen again.

"Let's ditch Cas, all right? I mean, fuck him. We've babysat this liability while he didn't know his ass from his elbow." Dean winced. "We saved him multiple whippings for all the crap that comes out of his mouth. And this is the way he repays us? He's not much of a fighter, Dean, not compared to our old rhythm, just you and me."

"Yeah." Whether that was an agreement with all or some of what his brother had just said, Sam couldn't tell. He made a move to gather his things when he saw his brother sit down at another table.

With a guy.

Dean had gotten pretty good at picking out interested guys during the days when he and Cas were always looking for a third. He had this guy pegged the second he came in. About 6' 2", light brown hair cut short, broad shoulders, face that didn't seem likely to be into anything too hardcore. He was sitting with two female friends and his eyes occasionally lighted on Dean's.

The connection was made instantly with the help of Dean's gift of the gab, and it felt nice to talk to someone normal. Not his brother, not Cas, no heavy vibe from someone who knew how the world was hanging by a thread. Merely someone who looked at Dean as if no part of him were likely to be disgusting.

He looked back at Sam once, a challenge in his eyes, and only saw his brother nodding encouragingly.

When he went home with the guy, whose name was Eric, Dean wept after his lonely inches were finally taken into a man's mouth. It was his first time.

Something still made Dean hesitate about leaving Cas behind. Maybe they were getting some sick satisfaction about picking people up in front of each other.

And then a week later, Cas was gone.

"He was a jerk, anyway," Sam tried to console him. This was not something Dean was prepared for, especially after Cas said that he was so delighted to be suffering by Dean's side.

But the fact remained that Castiel was not only gone, but he didn't want to be found.


	5. Chapter 5

Four months went by. It was like waking up from a dream. A very hot, very painful dream that only left emptiness in its wake.

Dean couldn't believe the things he'd done during that time when his life's sexual polarity had been turned on its head. Now everything had taken a rapid half-turn back to his old, normal self and gotten stuck in some state of weightlessness. The veteran hunter did the only thing he could do: hunt any target that presented itself.

While Dean floated in his own personal zero gravity, he tried, above all, not to float too near to anyone else. That would cause the whole shebang to crash down with its full weight upon his head, he sensed.

He ganked and let the thoughts float to him. It was like temporary insanity, that period in which everything hit him at once about Cas and what he would do to be with Cas. He wondered what would have happened if Cas had simply liked him back. Maybe they would have gotten sick of each other by now. He doubted it. In his mind, this parallel life began to grow, one without pain, one with someone who touched him all over. Another version of Dean and Cas who never had to try and find each other while holding a door closed: the realization that he was—of all things that he had fought and feared—a man.

When he wasn't fighting with cold precision, Dean was silent the rest of the time. What was there to say? The anger that sometimes kicked the world into the right frames per second had nowhere to land. He still retained the collection of smut he'd starred in as proof that it had all really happened, and he'd watch it for a second or two in a state of wonder that Dean Winchester had ever gotten off so hard at being on the wrong end of a dick. Cas hadn't done these things to him, not really: he saw with his new icy clarity that he'd brought most of his troubles on himself.

One day they were working a job when Sam said he had a lead. Dean's auto-hunt mode didn't involve asking questions, so he followed his brother to an office building where the next clue supposedly lay. They walked to an office when Sam's knife was suddenly in his older brother's back.

"Okay Robocop, you're not going to keep spitting out your feelings through the barrel of a gun. You won't talk to me—fine. You have 50 minutes. If I don't hear you spilling your guts with this guy, I'm coming in to do it for you. Got it?"

Sam was comforted when he listened through the door of the therapist's office and heard voices in short order. About fifteen minutes later, he heard more than that.

"What is it? What happened?" Sam burst into the consultation room to find the therapist backing away from the chairs that Dean was tossing around. He had his brother in a headlock when he asked the counselor, "What did you say to him?"

"I said, 'Your boyfriend wasn't an angel through all this,'" the shaken-looking man said.

"Poor choice of words." Sam tossed the fee on the man's desk and dragged his brother out, again at knifepoint, to the car.

"What the hell?" he began. "Cas isn't an angel anymore. Are you losing touch with reality?"

"No," whispered the elder Winchester. He knew very well that Cas had come to life with very scanty knowledge about the world, and the little programming he did bring with him was obviously of the vanilla persuasion.

Only someone who's been around the seamiest block a few times would be able to suggest most of the perversions they got up to. And that person had to have been Dean.

Besides, Sam's priorities were clearly off. Who cares if Dean was miserable, what mattered was that they had no news of Cas. The two hunters approached the manhunt like any hunt (Sam, with perhaps a little too much of the same gusto) but there was no word of a man with odd mannerisms matching Cas' description showing up in a jail, a hospital, or as part of a hunter's supernatural warning system.

Even their Ouija-wielding witch hadn't heard a peep about Cas.

Sam laughed from the passenger seat.

"What's so funny?"

"Tim. He's got this ghost all scoped out for us and told us to expect 'a shotgun-wielding Dame Edna,' you know, this drag performer—he sent me a picture."

Something that had begun taking shape for months finally broke through Dean's self-absorption. "You seem awfully into him. Are you guys a thing now?"

Sam chuckled.

"No, that's not for me. Tim may not be comfortable with his powers yet, but he is the best psychic we've come across since Pamela, and I like having him as a friend rather than an enemy. And to be honest, I've needed some help while you and Cas have been dealing with your issues-it hasn't been easy."

Dean did feel guilty about not having his head in the game, but he didn't like receiving Sam's dose of guilt on top of the one he already had. "Maybe I should tell him what happens to our friends."

"Dude, I don't think he'd care. The guy hates himself, Dean. He might not be a hunk, but in the mirror he sees the Elephant Man. I do try to butter him up every chance I get because he needs something to feel confident about. I mean, we've been there with the self-loathing thing how many times? Tim is about the only person who i think is a good candidate for our 'avoid your own dark shit by confronting evil' coping strategy. And he's out there right now, one hand running his business, the other surfing the airwaves looking for Cas."

"Great. He won't hate the way he looks any longer if he gets his eyes burned out," Dean grumbled.

This unfortunately made him think about Cas, the inadvertent eye-burner of their old friend and psychic, Pamela, and they lapsed into glum silence.

"We've both wished for someone we could share the life with, someone that we didn't have to lie to right and left and then leave behind," Sam said tentatively. "I think that was a big part of Ruby's allure, and probably part of you and Cas, too. Maybe the next time we're moving through Montana we can sit you in front of his board and he can try to get a better fix on—"

"I swear you are now, and have always been, the girliest damn Winchester there ever was," Dean exploded, having seen through his brother's ruse immediately. "Play matchmaker with your Barbies. Give your hair a V05 treatment. Leave me out of it, and above all, have your pal keep his Ouija off me. I don't want to attract attention on the airwaves, what with Cas in the wind and maybe hurt. There's no telling who could try to take advantage of his situation."

Or, Dean thought privately, his own situation. So far, he'd decided to not entertain any of the gossip about him and Cas, and the teasing had been no different than it had always been. Cas was a pseudo-Winchester, and the Winchesters were codependently loyal about their own. End of story, as far as hunters seemed to see it.

"Hey man, like it or not, Tim's a member of the team by now," Sam pursued. "How do you think I've been able to track down cases, and research monsters and everything else all this time? You're still a great driver, I'll give you that, and you'll stake, shoot or stab anything I put in front of you, but that's about it."

Dean spluttered in the seat next to him.

Sam guffawed. "I started playing this game where I'd start saying some crazy shit, or singing, like once I sang the entire 'My Little Pony' theme song and neither you nor Cas said a word. Occasionally, he'd sort of wake up out of a daze and ask me what I was talking about, and then I'd say something like 'Gilligan was a great explorer who was the first to navigate to Greenland from Europe in the 12th century,' and he'd say, 'Very interesting,' and go back to obsessing about what I assume was you."

"Cas is family. We don't know anything about this guy Tim except that he can clue into the astral plane without any idea of what he's doing."

"Without Bobby manning the phones and looking shit up for us, we've been hurting."

"He is not a substitute Bobby!" Dean cut in.

"I mean, you have to admit, those little old ladies and men we've been paying to answer the phone for us can't have ben very convincing," Sam continued cheerfully. "Tim keeps it professional."

Dean's nervousness about this supposed new team member did not extend to all practitioners of the occult. In fact, he started going back to fortunetellers to see if Cas was even alive, which was getting more and more doubtful. If a Winchester didn't want to be found, he could live under the radar almost indefinitely. But Cas could barely keep a cover story straight. The odd rhythm of his speech was bound to attract attention without someone covering for him. It was more likely he was dead after this time with zero intel.

But the card readers and astrologers gave the mumbo-jumbo version of "eh" when they looked into it. Dean even dragged his brother back with him to threaten the person reading his stars, but they said the same thing. "Things are up in the air, but not in an ominous way."

The email appeared in Dean's inbox about four months after Castiel's disappearance.

"Today is Thursday." That's all the subject line said. The email address was unfamiliar, a bunch of letters and numbers, so that he almost thought it was spam. It was Thursday, after all.

The message itself was blank.

"Sam!" Dean hollered. "Get your bachelor's degree in here!"

His younger brother rushed back from getting some ice to put on a black eye he picked up in a fight. "What's the matter?" He looked over his brother's shoulder to where he was pointing at the screen.

"It's gotta be Cas," he breathed. "Do that thing where you trace where it came from." Sam just stood there. "Angel of Thursday, hello!"

At first, Sam only gave in to appease his brother, but the more he looked into the message, the more intrigued he became.

"What? What is it? Can we find him?" Dean urged.

"This is weird. I'm not a hacker, but I've traced my fair share of email paths. This one is unlike anything I've ever seen." And he rattled off some technical things Dean had no patience for at a time like this.

"Stop speaking geek! Where is he? Uzbekistan?"

Sam called in some help from a few more technically minded people, but they all agreed. This email dead-ended. It was like it came from nowhere.

All of the worry Dean had been swallowing about his lover had been stirred up by three words, and the hope that Cas was alive and still willing to talk to him alternated with the conviction that this was just cyber junk.

The second message came from the same address, but it said, "Today is Tuesday."

"It is Tuesday, Dean. Maybe it's automated spam," Sam reasoned.

The messages began coming once a week. They could come on any day of the week, including a weekend. And all they said was what day it was.

"Maybe it's a code," Sam suggested. They crunched the different days of the week in the order they'd been sent, but couldn't make up a word or figure or even what kind of cipher the sender might be using.

Sam's techie friends analyzed the messages for hidden code. No dice.

"I think it's him," Dean asserted, although when he'd taught Cas how to send emails he'd gotten equally terse but more amusing messages. "Hello, Dean. You are urinating as I write this. I am looking forward to unclothing you later. Goodbye, Castiel," was more like it.

This went on for several more months. Dean had a chance to think about whether he wanted Cas back, and it seemed that he did because he checked his email constantly. He didn't care that his brother looked upon him with pity.

Then one day there was a knock at their motel room door where they were wrapping up a case in West Virginia.

"Hello, Dean."

Dean dragged the visitor inside and punched him a couple times. "You dumbass, you fuckup, leaving like that and no real word—"

Sam pushed them apart, but not before allowing a couple well-placed blows to reach their former companion.

"Let's hear him out. Where have you been all this time?"

"I was in a psychiatric ward for a while," Cas said, coming up for air after downing the shot Sam poured for him.

"They don't give you a phone call? Even crazy people have rights." Dean lashed back, fully irate now that he was sure Cas was okay.

"Not at this psychiatric ward. This one was run by the Department of Homeland Security. They were very particular about such things."

The impact of the mother of all governmental agencies you wouldn't want to be picked up by knocked the wind out of the brothers momentarily.

"How did you ever get out?" Sam asked while Dean was floundering in retrospective worry.

"I don't recommend trying it," that voice said, all sandpaper-and-sweetness like always. "The only way I was let out of the box they had me in was when my suggestions about recombinant DNA, while still theories, proved to be 'light years ahead of the current understanding of the subject.' Or so the National Institutes of Health finally realized."

Dean glanced over at Sam, but that seemed to mean nothing to him, either. "Thank God for that," Dean managed and took a slug from his flask.


	6. Chapter 6

"They kept you in a box?"

"Did they use drugs on you?" The brothers were dying to know what happened to someone who got grabbed by this particular arm of the many long arms of the law.

"I believe the sensory deprivation is designed to be a punishment, but it actually worked in my favor," Cas said. "When my deep state of meditation made me unresponsive, they put me in the psychiatric wing of their facility. But I was only there for a week or so," he related with a calm that did not match the attitude of his questioners. "It took them that long to figure out that I had not shown up at the National Institutes of Health to commit a terrorist act, and that the genetic information I was trying to convey wasn't the ravings of a lunatic."

"You look thin, did they feed you?" Dean set some cold pizza in front of the other man and he began devouring it.

"Not very much when I was with Homeland Security, and my research kept me fully occupied, but as I said, this only helped the meditative state that was so fruitful for me."

He accepted a can of soda and drank deeply.

"It was my mistake to start off talking about how matter works on a theoretical level and then how this was related to genetics. Then they released me back into the care of the NIH, and when we were able to talk freely I hit upon virology as a matter of some interest to them. We had a grand time discussing how those curious entities function. They gave me a strain upon which to illustrate my theories, and," he chuckled, "We may very well have found a remedy for that particular strain of viral meningitis."

"And how did you tell them you came by this information?" Sam asked while Dean remained speechless at this unsuspected knack of Cas'. "Big-time government facilities don't just chat about their cutting-edge research."

Cas shrugged. "Having no past worked in my favor. As we have discovered, nothing in my body exactly matches Jimmy's, so there was room for reasonable doubt that my fingerprints and such matched anything in their database." Cas' lack of a record had made him the go-to guy when they needed something really illegal done. "The psychiatric unit at Homeland Security diagnosed me as prone to fugue states and as being somewhere on the autism spectrum. These scientists took that at face value and didn't ask any more questions."

The brothers hid a smirk.

"And you couldn't pick up a phone because they were still afraid of you sharing genetic nukes with Al Qaeda," Dean stated.

"Yes, the NIH was intrigued by my ideas but still very concerned that I would filter information to foreign powers or profiteers, so they monitored my messages. When they finally agreed to my sending something innocuous, I let you know I was all right."

"You waited until a Thursday to email me." Dean imagined those terse messages being typed out by a Cas surrounded by nervous, white-coated people, and he felt even more guilty for being upset with his former lover.

"Yes, they would never know the significance of the day, and after assuring you that it was me the best way I knew how, each message was more of the same. "

Sam and Dean exchanged a "not bad" shrug.

"We're glad you're okay, Cas, but why did you run off with no warning?" Sam's question came in a less friendly tone than before.

"During my eons as an angel, you can imagine I absorbed a huge amount of information. The human organism has always been of interest to me, and some of us angels who were curious used to entertain ourselves by examining different parts of it in comparison with other DNA-based life forms."

"You mean you're, like, sitting on the cure for cancer?"

"Yes and no. Virology is something I remember very well for some reason, other things less well. But as I have described several times since I became human, all that is there somewhere, in that huge angel-memory I can still access in small pieces with my human brain.

"Luckily, they kept me in solitary confinement long enough that it helped me focus on finding the right archive, so to speak. And with the help of their marvelous equipment I had some hope of putting this information to good use. They showed me something called cloud computing, that is somewhat similar."

Dean snorted, thinking it was an angel joke.

"It's like virtual memory storage. Companies use it," Sam explained.

Dean went back to looking overwhelmed.

Sam glanced over at his brother with pity. "Maybe you should get to the point, Cas. It's not been a barrel of laughs while you were gone."

"Well, in a nutshell I—" Cas broke off and then said very formally, "I am sorry, Sam, this is private. It would be inappropriate for me to share something intimate that has to do with me and Dean."

The Winchesters shared a proud moment. "Inappropriate" was the single hardest concept they'd tried to instill in Cas, and here he was telling Sam something was off-limits. "Our angel is growing up," was the look they exchanged. Then they snapped back to the matter at hand.

"I'll go take a walk, but you know I'm only a phone call away," Sam said for both men's benefit. The door closed on the reunion that had gone way off the rails of Dean's expectations soon after it began.

"Dean," Cas murmured, stretching out a hand and then looking confused when Dean shrank away.

"So what, you needed another dose of that suffering I'm so good at dishing out?" What had been their last real conversation had never stopped resounding in Dean's ears.

"Perhaps," Cas said fondly. "I'm sorry that I left without explaining, but I didn't want to make any promises I couldn't keep." He smiled at the scowling Winchester before him. "I couldn't promise a cure that was at that time purely theoretical."

"Cure? So you spent months trying to figure out a way to completely ignore my dick? Glad to see you Cas, but I'm tired of being treated like a problem."

"No, I cured me." There was a slight, proud smile on Cas' lips. "While I was an angel, I paid special attention to this frequency at which your cells vibrated, which hadn't yet affected your behavior, but—I suppose I'd always been holding on to the idea that we might be together. As two men."

Dean was stuck on one word. "Cure? There's no cure for heterosexuality. And the government wouldn't exactly be subsidizing it, if there were."

"Happily, no one had any idea of my true mission. It was very delicate work, but I assure you, I would not have gone through so much trouble and then left before I was certain it was successful." Cas smirked. "And then the bus ticket they gave me when I insisted upon leaving put me in close proximity to a lot of people." He laughed at the look of horror on Dean's face. "Not that close proximity."

"Then how do you know?" Dean's momentary elation hit the stratosphere and then deflated.

Castiel talked and talked, and then finally saw that his stream of scientific gobbledy-gook wasn't reaching the man sitting across from him. "How do you know what makes your cells sing? If I didn't know for sure before I left Maryland to find you, I am sure, absolutely certain now that you are near."

His emotions in a riot, all Dean could think of to ask was, "How did you know where to find us?"

"The government has many more resources than I would have suspected. Did you know that they can find out with some degree of certainty where an email was accessed? They remarked that my friend moved around so much. And this is precisely the sort of motel you would choose."

There were finally no more questions except the ones Dean was afraid to ask. The television was turned on and Cas was laughing at cartoons for some time before Dean got the call.

"Everything all right?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, I don't know," Dean said with an eye on the Castiel who seemed like he'd never left. "But I do know that you're going to beef up our intel security."

They slipped into something more or less like their old routine. Dean deduced that his brother gave Cas a talking-to behind closed doors that had the third man in their trio shaken up for a long while. Cas was all but throwing his coat over mud puddles, the ex-angel was so anxious to prove he wasn't going to hurt Dean. This new formality left Dean wondering—was Cas staying several feet back from him at all times because he was afraid of getting his arms ripped off, or was this "solution" he'd brought back from his holiday with Homeland Security not really a solution at all?

The lingering ambivalence about their time together made Dean less and less likely to take any chances. He avoided being alone with Cas, whose cheerfulness in the face of everything they'd experienced was simply incomprehensible.

Dean was getting depressed all over again. Then one night they were fighting in an abandoned building, part of a housing development long condemned that was in a neglected neighborhood recently slated to become the next quaint upscale area. Turns out the whole place had become some kind of refugee colony for assorted otherworldly nastiness that was being systematically compressed into the smaller and smaller areas left by the demolition crew. There had been accidents, but there were also signs that the spirits were beginning to branch out and relocate.

Altogether, it was a big job that took days of concentrated effort. The three hunters had no time to be stilted or, in Sam's case, menacing, with one another. They were trying to gank everything they could without the building literally falling on their heads.

"Dean!" Cas grunted, alerting him about a falling beam. He reached out and grabbed Dean by the arm to get him back on his feet, and the fight went on.

Three filthy and sore men returned to the motel, with Sam having called the shower first. Which left Dean alone with Cas to study the ex-angel out of the corner of his eye. Had he imagined the odd moment they'd shared earlier? Dean could have sworn that when Cas grabbed his arm, the other man's hand lingered on the body hair that had grown back in his absence. If Cas thought he could start subjecting him to more agonizing rounds of waxing to hide who he was, he should think again, his brain was saying, but the rest of Dean felt a very interested glance examining him, also out of the corner of Cas' eye.

"That was the best shower I can remember," Sam said, emerging from the bathroom. "I can only hope it helped me cough up any asbestos I might have breathed in tonight."

"After you," Cas said like a gentleman.

Nothing much happened for several more days. If anything, Cas was more distant. But he had the unmistakable sensation that he was being watched. It set off a civil war inside Dean, who was afraid of his body once again not measuring up, who was positive that if Cas really wanted to he would have made a move, and other worries that overlay the real fear that he didn't want to, couldn't be with Cas again after everything that had happened.

One evening on the next job, they ended up in the room alone together. It was an accident—there was reason to believe a particular ghost had taken a liking to Dean, and so Sam had him in quarantine until they could figure out what to do about it. Cas had a standing date with the TV to watch one of the reality shows he got hooked on during his research.

"This is the most amusing sociology," Cas chuckled during a commercial break.

"It's trash!" exclaimed the king of trashy TV, his patience worn thin by all the uncertainty. "Put something else on. It depresses me to think that the people we risk our asses for could be that stupid."

"But the scientists I worked with agreed that these shows are an important cultural phenom—" Cas broke off as he had the remote tackled away from him.

They fought in earnest. Dean was larger and had all his many workout hours under his belt, but Cas had proven his hand-to-hand skill many times. Having seen the way people's anatomy functioned from his angelic perspective, he'd kind of sit there and dodge blows and then karate chop you in some place that made you crumble.

The advantage shifted back and forth, the two men grunting and toppling each other over. Suddenly, Dean froze.

Cas' arousal was pressing into his leg.

They resumed fighting with a new edge. All of Dean's pain at having been only conditionally desired was suddenly at the fore. His opponent, meanwhile, found excuses to run his hands over the hairy arms, to make the muscles ripple under the t-shirt. Cas reached out and grasped the stubbly cheek, and then rubbed his own against it.

It was an animal gesture of recognition and it brought animal comfort.

Castiel drew back and they stared at each other. He pushed Dean backwards and landed on top of him, mouth first. Their tongues sparred as their bodies kept fighting. Dean felt hot hands under his shirt that slid enticingly down to hook in his belt loops. "Do you want it?" the voice growled lewdly in his ear.

A breathless Dean had just enough presence of mind to ask, "Do you?"

A low rumble sounded in his ear as he was undressed roughly. "What do you think?" Cas said as removed his shirt and pants and let out his concentrated lust. It was placed on Dean's tongue, but only for a moment.

When the verge disappeared into the hot mouth, Dean's breath was sucked along with it. He could scarcely believe this oft-imagine scene was happening. He realized that the voice whimpering "please" was his own when he saw Cas look up, grinning.

"You want it."

Something of their old dynamic quivered between them. Dean bit his lip stubbornly.

Their hairy legs tangled together and both men moaned.

The former angel fixed them so that they could trade pleasure simultaneously. The inexperienced Cas was having a little trouble, and so Dean reassured him about advanced skills, "It comes with practice."

"I don't remember you having any problem. You must have a natural aptitude," Cas smiled wickedly and he made sure Dean was too occupied to respond. Their pleasure built and built and it seemed as though Cas keep giving every reassurance to Dean until there was no more to give.

But they didn't go all the way, not that night. Cas soon disengaged so he could be right side up and rubbing his face against his partner's in this new gesture of his that made Dean's throat catch.

"That was amazing. But do you still want-?" Dean had to be sure that it was all right to finally relax in Cas's complete acceptance of a body that had never been fully desired before. The lips closed on his for a long moment.

"What do you think?" the masculine voice rasped into the ear he was nibbling on.

They showered together and were sitting primly, one to each bed, when Sam came back. The younger brother gave that "Do I need to kick your ass?" look he'd been giving Cas of late, but didn't seem to notice the conspicuous lack of tension in the room. "We were going to order pizza," Dean said. "You in?"

That night, Sam was gathering some blankets for his rotation on the floor when he saw Cas climb into bed next to Dean. The younger brother shrugged and gladly took the other bed.

Once everything got out in the open before Cas left, the couple had started sharing a bed because it made sense. They observed the strict "no funny business" rule imposed by Sam because Dean had no desire to get it on in front of his brother. He and Cas were having enough problems by then without the curse gluing them together, so their bodies never ended up too closely entwined.

The next morning, while Dean's penis was still reeling from satisfaction, the couple awoke to the sound of a clearing throat. "Ahem. I really didn't need to see the gory details," Sam said, looking straight ahead. Cas had wrapped himself around Dean's back at some point during the night.

The two men hastily separated. Dean thought for sure Sam was fighting back a smile.

Everything was far from perfect, however. Third base was heavenly but it wasn't a home run. Getting all the way home-they both wanted it, hell, he really wanted it, but it was cause for some arguments. Where Cas' movements had always been constrained by his preference not to see all of his partner, now he was eager to try out new configurations. But some new, touchy place in Dean took this as a sign that Cas no longer liked what he saw in Dean's natural contours. When they tried to do it the way they used to, Dean was distracted by the idea that he was being compared. Those few ounces in the right place might not have been visible to his straight brother, but without them, it completely changed the aesthetic of his body and he knew it.

Then there was the fact that sometimes Dean couldn't stand to be touched-and what happened the first time they tried to go all the way.

His clothes were back on and he was halfway down the street with his tears dried before Cas caught up with him.

"Dean, what happened? Did I offend you in some way?" Cas said with his old formality.

"No!" Dean said furiously, on his way to pick up alcohol, any alcohol. Cas slept on the floor that night. And the occasional night thereafter. "I can take care of myself, Sam," he said when he saw his brother's cold gaze fixed on Cas. "I can screw up my own life, all right? Everybody leave me the hell alone."


	7. Chapter 7

When you've just been handed everything you wanted and you're still miserable, there's only one person to blame. Dean was pissed at himself for it. And then Cas was so sweet about everything, constantly trying to make Dean happy, that it made him feel unworthy, and that was more cause to be pissed off.

If they could have been left to their own devices, the two men's bodies communicated perfectly. Everything was so good for them now that when things turned bad it was always kind of a shock.

"Do you want it?" The question came while Dean's mouth was too occupied to speak, so he had his answer ready when he was allowed to offer it.

"You know what I like." He was about to go back to doing it when Cas moved backwards.

"You have to say it."

"Yes, I want it." The admission that was still so titillatingly shameful came out of his mouth easily, because it was the truth.

Everything was going very well for the space of several long minutes. Dean felt full, he felt loved, he felt like putty in Cas' hands. They rocked towards perfection.

Nearing the critical juncture, hands grasped Dean's hips. Dean began wriggling in the opposite direction. The other man took it as a tease and began propelling himself forward at the same rate to keep their connection. So excited was Cas by this gambit that only when Dean toppled over the side of the bed did he realize something was wrong.

"We talked about this, Cas," Dean said afterwards, feeling ashamed for ruining another lay.

"You do realize that this is entirely in your head, don't you Dean?" the querulous voice demanded. "I have always wanted to be near you and now being in your presence causes a near-constant state of excitement for me. This was supposed to be our salvation and now it is my curse. Are you punishing me for everything that went before?"

"No, Cas, I don't really know how to put it." The feeling that something essential had been amputated off the back of him was so crazy Dean didn't want to own up to missing his old curves so much it was crimping his style in bed.

Castiel made a noise of disgust and turned on the television, which had the effect intended.

Dean threw his partner's clothes at his face. "I know you're still new to this human stuff and all, so here's a life lesson for you. The only people that say 'It's all in your head' are dicks, because everybody else knows that just because it's in your head doesn't mean you can control it."

"You used to like them," Cas said with his eyes on the screen. "Dicks, I mean. I create a completely unheard-of scientific technique in order to like yours, and suddenly mine is no good? I deserve an explanation."

Dean sighed. "That curse did a lot of things for us. It helped me face up to liking dudes. It sort of stuck us together when we didn't have that much to go on. But we've pretty much decided that both those things were already real, there were just some complications in the way."

Dean couldn't meet the cold eyes studying him.

"Then the curse changed my body, too. That was supposed to be a means to an end, but it's kind of become an end unto itself, no pun intended. I feel like this really important part of me is missing, and I'm all off-kilter. When you touch me, when I look into the mirror, when anything reminds me that the me I think I am was really only a passing illusion, it's freaky. This," he grabbed his backside, "this feels like I'm going outside without my nose or with my arm hacked off or something. You don't have to tell me, it's totally crazy, Cas," he looked his angelic friend in the eye. "I hate that I'm the one causing problems for us now over something so stupid. Sam can't even tell the difference." He sat back miserably.

Cas nuzzled in Dean's neck. "I find your body to be utterly arousing, Dean. I'm not going anywhere. Let's find a way to help your brain receive new, very pleasurable experiences and I am confident you will stop thinking about what you look like. Or rather, you will associate this slightly changed body with the happiness that is no longer having an obstacle in between."

During the next few minutes Dean was able to gather even more evidence to support Cas' comment from the first time they got together after his return. Dean was forced to recognize that the oral techniques Cas was still trying to learn had come to Dean much more quickly. He must have really had an aptitude for it.

Now that Dean's psychological hang-ups were out in the open, Cas was trying hard to be accommodating. They isolated the positions that didn't remind Dean about his old (new) body, and for several days things were much better. Sam's attitude was slowly thawing towards Cas, but any indication that Dean was unhappy was cause for more calculating looks from the younger Winchester, who remembered the long months with a catatonic sidekick very clearly.

They worked a short job and got another one almost immediately. Then one afternoon, during one of their arranged couple times in the motel room, Cas said unexpectedly, "I have a present for you, Dean."

"A present?" After the awkward roll in the hay they'd just had, which wasn't worth the name because Dean was laying there rigidly most of the time, the last thing Dean felt like he deserved was a present.

Cas brought out a lacy tablecloth, which he handed to Dean with an intent expression.

"Dude, Cas, I may get off on you giving it to me good, but I'm not exactly gay in the interior decorating sense." He turned it over. "Or is this like some kind of cloak that makes you invisible?" He tried putting it on and then took it off. "Smells like mothballs."

"They used these up until Victorian times so it wasn't too hard to find one. I've been wanting to show you the way many Western societies approached the body—in fact, some Orthodox societies still use them." Cas pointed to the lace-trimmed hole in the center. "For some married couples over many centuries, the only part of themselves that they ever shared unclothed was through here—and certainly it was accomplished in the dark." He saw Dean's uncomprehending stare. "It's a conjugal sheet. Normally it would be a wedding gift that would be used throughout a marriage."

Suddenly the dark flecks and other discoloration around the opening made a different kind of sense to Dean's brain, which initially took them for gravy spills. "You mean Victoria's secretions are all over this?" He flung the article across the room, nauseated. "Do me a favor, Cas, and never give me a present again."

"I am trying to make a point, Dean. To your modern eyes, the idea of two people keeping their bodies from each other while in the act of intimacy seems absurd, a contradiction. I feel the same way about having to keep to all these confusing protocols in order to ravish you when I don't care what you look like."

Dean couldn't wait until Cas finally developed social skills. "Yeah? You don't care what I look like? Then maybe we should use the sheet. In fact, we should have used it all along."

"I went so far as to engineer myself into the ability to desire you—which was no small feat, I'll have you know," the gravelly voice said testily.

Dean gritted his teeth.

"And the only thing you have to do is allow yourself to be desired. Why can't you do that?"

"Maybe because you can't quit reminding me that you had to give yourself a gay transplant to be able to look at me with the lights on!"

"Dean," Cas' voice came more quietly. "I am so helplessly in love with you I would procreate with you right now if I could."

"If you keep talking about how hard it was to be attracted to me, you're never going to get to first base again," Dean muttered.

"No, you don't understand." Cas sat them down next to each other on the bed. "When I first came to life I felt this desire for you warring with something in the way. In my long hours alone in the laboratory, I had time to think about it, hoping that the gene therapy would help satisfy this desperation the very thought of you aroused in me. And it did, Dean. It was like being deaf for a long time and suddenly being able to hear your charms." He caressed Dean's thigh. "But I also discovered that being able to be with you with my whole heart only satisfied part of the urge."

Dean's heart sank. He'd been trying to prepare himself for the other shoe dropping after this miracle cure. And Cas' next speech did cause his jaw to drop.

"It was the urge to procreate with you, I came to think, the deep biological imperative that humans feel when they regard someone so highly they wish to create something together. And while fate has made us both men, all avenues are not closed to us." He broke off to study Dean's reaction. "That day may not be as far off as you think. There are people exploring same-sex reproduction at NIH as we speak. I asked them to leave word with me if there were any breakthroughs."

Dean finally spluttered out, "Procreate? We can't—we couldn't—"

"You wouldn't engender offspring with me if you could?" Cas asked, crestfallen.

"We're dudes! Dudes don't procreate." He closed his eyes, transfixed by the horrifying image of some half-Cas, half-Dean child running around all fucked up like it would undoubtedly end up. A synthetic human and a basket case were bound to fail big at the genetic lottery. He opened his eyes and took the hand of a genuinely saddened Cas. "Nobody should be forced to shoulder the Winchester mental issues," he said lightly.

"But your offspring would have the consolation of possessing good looks that allow them to get away with whatever they like," Cas said, rubbing Dean's cheek with the back of his hand, then his own cheek. That gesture affirmed that they were at last together, even if they both wished for more.

And that horrifying idea of a test-tube baby—or worse, a non-test-tube baby!—made by him and Cas had an unexpected calming effect upon their tense relations in bed. Or at least, it calmed Dean. Cas really wasn't going anywhere. Dean gave all of his insides to their lovemaking, which still did not involve all of his outsides. And when Dean did kick Cas out because he couldn't bear the feeling of being a double amputee having his twin absences groped by a sleeping Cas, he ejected his lover with less fear that he was breaking their entire relationship every time.

Late one night, Cas was batted away one too many times. He leapt out of the bed, dressed quickly and slammed himself out of the room.

"What the hell?" Sam exclaimed sleepily.

"Don't ask," Dean mumbled.

They went through their day of hunting and knocked off for dinner at about seven.

Back in their room a drunken Cas was slumped before the television, his stained shirt ripped in one place and hair a mass of cowlicks.

"Look what the cat dragged in," Sam observed. "We could've used your help today."

"I was on a bender," Cas slurred the obvious, taking another drink from the bottle nestled to his side.

Sam was unimpressed, but to Dean, Cas had never looked more a boy, all rumpled and petulant and watching cartoons. Cas, the eternal child, looking for the childhood he'd never had. Dean stood there for a moment, another man who had been deprived of a real childhood by his early induction into the hunter lifestyle. Maybe that was the nature of their bond from the get-go.

"Let's get something to eat, I'm starving," Sam said. "He needs to sleep it off."

"Nah, Sammy, we're bringing my plus one." He started rummaging in his lover's bag. "Brush your teeth, Cas, and put these on."

Obediently, Cas went to the bathroom and started running the water. The two brothers listened as the deep voice began singing, though it was occasionally muffled by toothpaste. One of the biggest surprises of Cas' new body had been that it possessed a very nice singing voice, which the new human used to reflect the pop culture he was absorbing at a rapid rate. This day, the selection was Boy George's "Karma Chameleon" at a couple octaves lower than the original.

Sam was smiling despite himself. "Come on, Sammy, it'll be a blast, just like old times. You remember when he first joined the mortals and we took him to that bar where everybody thought he was a genius?" Even though Cas got stinking drunk, when they started a bar quiz he still aced all the history stuff and whatever else you pick up from being around for millennia. "I came across that photo we took with his prize just the other day. It'll be hilarious."

"Yeah, okay," Sam allowed. "But you're not the least bit worried about where he was last night?"

Dean shook his head, still feeling the bizarre warmth caused by someone directing the words "ravish" and "procreate" at him, as had happened in their conversation a few days before. "No. That's one thing I don't have to think about with Cas. I'm so not worried about him, he worries me, you know what I'm saying?"

Sam probably didn't, and that's how he wanted to keep it. A better-groomed man emerged from the bathroom. "Hey Cas, you look so good I'll let you ride shotgun." Sam flashed a grin at his brother.

In the car ride to the restaurant Cas sang along with the radio, Dean helping him where he didn't know the words. As far as Sam was concerned, Dean's middling voice was not something to bring a smile to your face, so watching the couple's sing-along in the front seat had him shaking his head in mock-disapproval.

They sat down at the table and it wasn't two minutes before Cas' good humor dissipated.

"Can't I just give you a goat and be done with it, Sam?" Cas burst out.

The two brothers stared at each other, unable to match the sentence with the hostile manner in which it was said.

"The ancient Sumerians used to have a custom whereby a man seeking a partner would offer a certain amount of livestock to the family of his betrothed, thereby signifying an end to their claim upon the individual to be wed. Sumeria was the last occasion that I had to examine human betrothal customs in depth, but I presume there is some method for at last putting an end to your right to glare at me on your brother's behalf!"

"There's no one betrothed here," Dean laughed nervously for the benefit of the waitress waiting to take their order and the elderly couple in the next booth.

"Time and place, Cas," Sam said with a fixed smile. "We need another minute," he told the waitress.

"I mean it, Sam," Cas said in a low, dangerous voice. "You might say I signed up for your brother's inexplicable moods, but I did not sign up for you treating me like the devil himself, when you of all people should know that Lucifer is the worst of my brothers."

Several incredulous looks were sent in their direction. Dean waved down the waitress and for a moment the stream of embarrassment stopped coming from Cas' mouth as the elder brother suggested some items from the menu.

"You're at the stage of being drunk where you need to eat, Cas, take it from someone who knows."

"You are the undisputed master of debauchery," Cas said, looking at Dean through his eyelashes.

The target of this flirtation couldn't resist the urge to try and smooth down some of the places where the wet comb had been helpless to plaster over the wild time. Cas slumped against him for a minute, and Dean didn't care who thought what about it. Sam was evidently not inclined to get on anyone's nerves for the rest of the meal.

"Here, have some of my fries," Dean said when the food came, and then joked, "You never know when one of my moods is going to come along, so take advantage of the offer while it's still good."

"That's another thing," Cas picked up where he left off in an even louder voice, "Why is it, Dean, that when you don't desire relations, you're the one that gets the bed, and I have to sleep somewhere else-every time?"

Every eye in the restaurant burned into Dean's face. He and Cas weren't exactly inhibited when they were in public places other than gay bars, but he didn't like this through the looking glass feeling that he was enacting an "I Love Lucy" episode for others' enjoyment and that he wasn't even Ricky.

Sam burst out laughing, whether at his brother's mortification, the appraising glances from the other customers, or Cas' deadpan delivery of the question.

"That's all on you, Cas. My brother, he'll walk all over you if you let him. Choose your battles, that's what I do."

That night they were getting ready for bed. Cas had been dozing off in the car on the way back, but while Sam was taking a shower he perked up and said to Dean, "Tonight I would like to touch you without some complicated set of rules to remember. It's up to you whether I bring out the conjugal sheet or not," Dean blanched, "Or you may choose to sleep on the floor."

Dean laid himself down and stayed very still. When the lights went off, he felt Cas' heat pressing into him from behind. "This laying down the law thing is very nice. Is this what I should have been doing all along?" Cas inquired.

"Maybe. I can be awful hard-headed."

They slept.

In the middle of the night, Dean got up and quietly moved to the floor. Sure, he was fighting against the urge to push Cas away from these two parts of himself that were unhealing wounds. But from his vantage point on the floor, it was pretty easy to see that he'd much rather be with his lover. The best sleep in his life he'd had in those arms. During his wakefulness he decided to take things to a level he'd been desiring and fearing for some time. It was the only way he could think of to meet Cas halfway.

They spent days planning it. The enjoyable, covert bickering they shared was a sign that things were already getting right with his lover, Dean believed.

"What are you guys whispering about?" Sam exploded from the front seat after being left out of the loop for over a week. Dean and Cas were passing a notepad back and forth in the back seat.

"We are—" Cas began.

"Nothing. Mind your own business," Dean snapped. "I'm taking some personal leave time when we get to Boston, by the way."

"I'm not your employer, exactly, Dean. I'm sure Cas and I can handle whatever comes up," Sam said with a careful upbeat note to his voice. He'd been trying to stop taking sides between his two companions. And after all, he knew how high-maintenance his brother was. Cas probably deserved a medal for taking most of his brother's quirks in stride.

As it turned out, Cas took some time as well because Dean was terrified of the tattooist inking the wrong Enochian symbols onto his skin. "You've gotta make sure they don't write 'Kick me' or something instead of what we decided on."

"Of course," Cas said in his courtly manner, but when they got to the tattoo parlor he was looking at Dean like he used to, back when the curse had given Dean the curves he missed so much. The smoldering glances were enough to make the pain of the tattoo gun worthwhile.

That, and anticipating what it would be like to be taken by Cas with the classy version of a tramp stamp on his lower back.

"What language is this supposed to be?" the beefy leather dad asked while he slowly transferred the complicated array of symbols onto Dean's skin.

"It is a psalm written in my native tongue, and it says—" Cas began uttering the odd syllables Dean knew always meant business.

"A psalm, huh? Kind of a weird place to put something religious, if you know what I mean. You don't strike me as a holy roller, exactly," Max said appraisingly of the hunter under his gun.

"It means Kilroy was here. Now, how much longer is it going to take?" Dean asked.

In reality, the phrase Dean took home with him said something to the effect of, "What has been consecrated may never be broken asunder." Or, as he liked to think of it, the angel equivalent of "This ass is Cas'."

"This is a big job—you're lucky you caught me on an off day. Those wings go most ways up your back, and it's going to take some work to make them match up," the tattooist said of the protection symbols Cas had added to both sides when Dean had second thoughts about his tramp stamp looking exactly like what it was.

"They're not wings, they're, how do you call it, arabesques," Dean said through gritted teeth, borrowing a word from one of the tattoo sites they consulted. Though he'd never admit it, the two splayed patterns reaching up his sides were, in fact, an homage to the wings Cas had given up. The two men had both been excited about the end result, but right then Dean hated lying there with his pants halfway down, exposing half of his least-favorite feature to some random leather-bear.

Except for the occasional proprietary glance sent Max's way, Cas seemed to be getting off hard on the process of marking Dean. Hopefully that was a sign that this much-fantasized step would help them both do the same.

It did take a long time, and the guy was actually pretty nice. Dean lay there and dealt with the pain by an occasional nip from his flask, and Cas talked with the older man about how things had changed for gay people in his lifetime. The only touchy territory was when they started talking about the goods between Max's huge gloved hands.

"This is going to set off his assets real nice," he said casually. "A nice back and shoulders, and then this design will give him a kind of wasp waist effect—hot idea of yours, I take it."

"When Dean first brought it up, I was hesitant to mark what I think is already perfect, but I plan on enjoying this quite a bit," Cas agreed.

"I can hear you," Dean said in an endorphin-juiced giggle. Of course he was mega turned on by Cas talking about him like his owner in front of someone else, as they used to in their old activities under the curse, but Dean was still not comfortable admitting these tastes to others.

It was finally done. By this time Max was talking exclusively to Dean's keeper, giving Cas the aftercare instructions and ointment that would help the aching skin heal faster. Then Cas interrupted Dean surveying his plastic-wrapped back in the mirror.

"Thank you for this most meaningful gift, Dean," the deep voice purred as Castiel slung an arm over his shoulder and pulled him close for a kiss that reached the root of his tongue.

"That's what I like to see—two satisfied customers," Max smiled where he was counting his cash. Then he warned, "A pretty boy like that-he's going to look so hot when it's all healed up you're going to have to keep him on a leash."

"This is the leash," Cas steered them out. "Every Enochian speaker has a subtle syntax all their own. Any angel would immediately know that I have had you."

They pulled off onto an abandoned stretch of road so they could quickly let off the frustrations accumulated during that long period under the gun. All the while, the two men were groaning their anticipation of Dean being taken like the slut he was marked as.

The first time Cas took the tattooed Dean out for a drive, it was everything they imagined. The mirror across from the motel bed was not ideally placed for maximum viewing, but Dean did get the profane sight of his inked back bouncing as if he were made for it. Their lovemaking was avid, anxious, even, just like it used to be. Cas threw the marked body around as if it were there entirely for his whims, and Dean's cries were more unrestrained than they had been for a long time. Afterwards they lay together with Dean's sexual preferences blaring on his back, never to be hidden again.

"This was another of your creative ideas, Dean. Did you enjoy it as much as I did?," the sated gravelly voice asked while the fingers were gently tracing the patterned lower back.

"Yeah it was super-hot, Cas, we should've done this a while ago," Dean agreed. "Hopefully the camera got some of it."

It did. Their old hidden camera was a last-minute flourish to their experience, and both men were looking forward to the spectacle of the taken and the taker, much as they had before.

They plugged in the memory drive to the government castoff laptop that was Catiel's gift from the NIH scientists. Dean's heart sank.

"Do I really look like that?" he asked of the clear shot of his back while he rode Cas.

"Yes, you look very slatternly—in a good way," Cas rushed to add, seeing that Dean was upset.

It was the first video of Dean with his old (new) body, and he was dismayed at what it looked like compared to their old videos. "I'm flat as a pancake, ink or no ink. You can't accentuate what isn't there."

Cas made a frustrated noise and snapped the computer shut. "If you can't take pleasure in your new look, can't you at least appreciate that I do?"

Dean slept on the floor that night. Cas sometimes brought the video of their tattoo-fueled coupling into the bathroom and satisfied himself while watching it. It was good that they'd recorded their one moment of shared euphoria, because Cas didn't get much chance to see the real thing.

Once Dean woke up with Sam already in the shower and Cas' hand moving on himself while gazing at the skin exposed by the t-shirt that had ridden up his lover's back in the middle of the night.

Feeling guilty that this was the only pleasure he was allowing his mate, Dean took over, reaching behind him and pulling Cas all over his bare lower back.

They lay there for a few moments in contentment. Cas' taste for marking him, which had been present since their very first couplings, made everything seem like it was normal again. Or what Dean's brain kept telling him was normal. "That was very nice. Can I return the favor?" Cas asked shyly.

The bathroom door opened. "Thanks, man, but I'll just wash myself off." He saw the rejection in his mate's eyes. "You can use my target for target practice any time you want."

So it couldn't be said that nothing came out of the agony under Max's gun. A sort of compromise was reached, and the couple times Cas dragged him to a gay bar so he could show off his mark upon his boyfriend, Dean felt himself desired, knew himself to be owned, and really could expect no more happiness from life than that.


	8. Chapter 8

Happiness was in short supply these days. Or so Dean would have noticed if he'd been of a mind to reflect about his situation. He and Cas fell into an alternate days schedule of who had the floor, because Dean couldn't tolerate any reminder of his perceived physical defect.

He hunted listlessly, letting the other two men take care of most of the responsibilities. Sometimes, he was ashamed to say, he hung back, forgetting about the hunt entirely so that he could watch crowds as if he could catch a glimpse of his lost sense of self walking around without him, living the life that had broken off from his own months ago.

One day Sam was driving them into Arkansas for some job-Dean hadn't paid attention to his brother's explanation. He was dozing in the back seat, too self-involved to notice that his two companions had been unusually silent the entire way. He woke up with a jolt as the car bumped down a gravel driveway in the middle of nowhere. Rubbing his eyes, he said, "What? Car trouble?"

"No, this is the job," Sam said, gathering some things from the trunk.

"Aw, can't we get set up in a motel first before we fight this—whatever?"

"This is where we are staying," Castiel said. His serious tone finally snapped Dean out of his daze and he followed the others into the small house set back from the road.

Tim came to open the door. "Hey guys, good to see you," he said without warmth.

Cas steered his partner through to the large open space with bare rafters that was combination kitchen and living room. There were some of the furnishings Dean remembered from Tim's old apartment, but they now had a distinct air of depression hanging around them. Dean felt Cas' arm wrap around his shoulders and the look in his lover's eye clearly said that this physical closeness was not to be fobbed off. Not this time.

Dean allowed himself to be anchored as he gazed around the room in panic. "Is this some sort of intervention?"

"It's the job," Sam declared. "You and Tim are the job." He shrugged, "Maybe I should have recognized what was happening to you awhile back, brother, but you and Cas have your ups and downs, while Tim has been going through his own bad time. I've been pretty concerned about him, never thinking that you were fighting the same thing. It also would've helped if you'd been upfront with me like Tim was," he reproached. They all gazed at their average-looking host who seemed thinner, paler and more nervous than the last time they met. "You guys are still cursed. We didn't get it all when it was transferred to the white supremacist guy. Who's conveniently dropped out of sight so we can't compare the course of this thing."

Sam and Cas had buried the hatchet at some point, but Dean hated to be plotted over by their united front. "Why didn't you talk with me about this instead of kidnapping me to compare my psychological hang-ups with someone else's?"

A look was exchanged over his head. Sam snorted. "You're impossible to talk to, Dean. I mean, ten times worse than usual. The only thing that really gets you going is exercise, and even that does nothing for your mood."

Cas cleared his throat and took over. "I have watched you slipping away without knowing what to do. Sam suggested that we pool our resources, the three of us, while he goes to consult some experts on occult matters. Each of us," he nodded from Tim, to Dean and then gestured to himself, "has our own strengths, so together we stand a better chance of removing the aftereffects that you and Tim seem to be experiencing."

"I feel like I'm lost in this alien body," Tim explained to Dean. "It wasn't great after I gave up my wish, but I thought some clean living on a friend's ranch would help me out. Then I had an idea for fixing, instead of living with, the problem, and I moved out here to the sticks to put my plan in motion. It was Sam who convinced me to put it off for a little while longer in hopes that we'd find the common denominator of what was making us miserable." He fidgeted in his seat and sent an appealing look to Sam, who broached the delicate subject.

"Tim's been thinking that maybe his problem is that his body is the wrong gender," Sam said very naturally. "He Oujiaed his way into some information about a surgeon who was one of the best in this field-until he got in too deep with gambling debts and ended up owing the mob. The guy's working as a schoolteacher as part of his witness protection nearby."

"But it turns out he's been performing some off-the-books plastic surgeries on the side," Tim managed a weak grin. "I figure I've got more than enough blackmail material to get him to do all the surgeries I need, and maybe I'll feel better. Coffee anyone?"

All that information had Dean gasping for air for several reasons. "Who are you?" he finally decided upon, looking at the unprepossessing man standing in the kitchen as if he hadn't seen him before. Which maybe the self-focused Dean hadn't.

"Turns out I've got Salem witch on both sides of my family and a psychic pedigree as long as your arm going way back before that. Everyone take it black?"

When the tray of cups was set on the table, Dean was able to say, "First of all, you okayed this plan, Sam? With the mob? We don't get within five degrees of separation from the mob, and I'm quoting straight from Dad. I told you, you're in a pizza joint and someone gives you the wrong vibe, you don't even make eye contact when you pay for the slice. People are crazy, Sam, you know that. We don't even stick a toe into that, that soup of human evil because people are so unpredictable they're liable to snap it right off. Don't you remember the family that was going to hunt us for sport?"

Sam and Tim were sitting there with identical "What, me worry?" looks on their faces.

"You guys are just alike!" Dean finally grasped. He got up to pace. "You're all, carrying on the business, as per usual, the soft-spoken brother, the voice of reason, and then you up and make a terrible, reckless decision worse than what the screw-up brother would ever do. We're not in the blackmail business, Sam. I don't know what your deal is, Tim, but my little brother needs the excitement that comes with chucking good sense out the window, I think."

"And a curse was such a reasonable solution to your problems with Cas?" his younger brother asked mildly.

"My Venus was having a train run on it!" was the only explanation he had handy for all the tumult caused by Cas' mint-condition humanity. "Wait, that sounded dirty. Whatever, guys. I'm not in the mood to argue," he sat down and got right back up to wheel on Tim. "And another thing, you don't go for the big, you know," his hands flailed around his own crotch, "because you think it 'maybe' is the right thing to do. Measure twice, cut once, that's the motto." He sank down onto the couch for good this time, suddenly exhausted.

"There is nothing wrong with someone seeking medical treatment to improve their life," Cas said pointedly. He'd tried and failed to get Dean to look into plastic surgery, but Dean knew that the addition of some unnatural substance would only serve as a reminder that his body wasn't the way it used to be. He set his jaw stubbornly and Cas sighed.

"Whether the curse is still affecting both of you, or you're experiencing the after-effects of losing your wish, you can't go on this way, Dean. I can't go on this way."

This woke Dean up. "You're giving me an ultimatum?"

His lover tried to squeeze his shoulder calmingly but Dean flinched away. Cas said patiently, "Think of it this retreat as a summit of supernatural knowledge. If we put our minds together, we must be able to make an improvement on the way things are now."

Dean listened to his brother and Tim firing up the Ouija board in the half-finished attic their host had showed them as the place where he made his contacts with the great beyond. The elder Winchester felt too depressed to watch what kind of trouble Sam was calling up with this loose cannon. He lay on the pullout bed in the living room and thought about very little. Cas was consulting some books from the house library until late. The house was quiet and Sam had retired to the couch on the glassed-in back porch by the time Cas approached Dean.

"Mm," Cas sniffed his erstwhile lover from head to toe. "I miss the way you smell." He made a move to take some cushions to the floor, as it was his turn, when Dean stopped him.

"Mark me," he said simply. And Dean lay very still, watching over his shoulder as a grateful, too grateful, man stimulated himself to the point that he added a fresh punctuation to the statement Dean's back already bore proclaiming he belonged to Cas. Then he got up, as he had often before, and went to the bathroom to survey the moisture glistening upon the ink at his lower back. It was the only thing debasing enough to help him get off as well while standing in front of the mirror just right. Then he turned on the shower as if it was wisdom instead of water raining on his thick head, and he tried to let some kind of insight about his own craziness soak in.

Sam was gone the next morning and Cas took over as the designated sane person of the group. If Dean could still care about such things, he would have been impressed at his lover's leadership qualities as he set up the series of occult experiments that they would use to try and isolate—and ultimately fix-the misery that clustered around the other two men like a persistent fog.

It was difficult for Dean to even look at Tim, because he saw all of his loss written large on this reedy man who was now-maybe-a generous 5 where he used to be a 10. He didn't know the fellow very well, but he sensed that Tim felt guilty at passing on this malady, on top of the misery he felt about his own unimpressive lot in life. They avoided being alone together, but Dean finally came to help with the washing up one afternoon.

"Next step would've been me calling all the demons of hell to accomplish the same thing," he said, taking up the towel and beginning to dry. "I would've left no stone unturned looking for ways for me and Cas to be together. You probably saved my soul, no joke, man, so don't feel bad about giving me what I wanted."

Cas' voice was singing from another part of the house, but Dean's smile about Cas being the only down-to-earth one of the bunch was not shared. If anything, Tim was more nervous about having an ex-member of the celestial choir in his house than anything else about his screwed up life. Dean could only imagine what kind of gossip was out there about Cas on the spirit network. "Castiel seems to know a lot of stuff. What language was he speaking today?"

Now that Cas was in experimental mode again, he was using the technique that had been so productive at NIH, where they'd set him up with a voice-activated recorder to preserve everything that happened when he went into a trance. Cas claimed to be accessing "files" from his own virtual storage, looking for information that might take away the last vestiges of the curse. It was scary to watch the rigid body start spitting out different languages, strings of numbers and pieces of ancient spells in some eerie monotone. The recording was then reviewed by his conscious mind as a way to jumpstart possibly useful memories. This was how Cas had recovered some of his knowledge about the human genome, so Dean wasn't going to question his lover's methods. That would involve him caring about this search for a cure, besides.

"No clue; didn't sound like Enochian," he said by way of an answer to Tim. "Count yourself lucky you didn't meet him when he was a feathered friend. Standing near him used to make my body hair stand on end—it was about as relaxing as talking to a lightning bolt." He paused. "Maybe I'm the one who's not the most relaxing person to be around these days. But in between all the shit that happens, you've got to try and make something good. That's the Winchester way. That washed down with copious amounts of alcohol." He dried his hands on the towel. "Another round of spells awaits the-what did you call us?"

"Body dysmorphic." They exchanged a grimace.

"Ready to get back in there, guys?" Cas popped up with his notes and a can-do attitude.

"Okay. I'll finish this job I have going tonight." Somehow Tim had been able to retain enough enthusiasm for life to retain his clients and otherwise keep his business going, and so the other two men had a good amount of time to themselves every day.

Never much of a hiker, Dean found some peace from walking around in the wintertime country landscape that was mostly scrubby browned vegetation, the occasional modest house and a few small farms. He and Cas made a point of walking or sitting together, mostly in silence these days, but Dean had never felt their bond so strongly as when he was otherwise helpless and hopeless. It was shining there, so bright against his depression, and he was unable to lift a finger to preserve it.

"If you ever get sick of this and move on to greener pastures, I won't hold it against you," he said one day while a little snow dusted over the dry pasture that stretched along the dirt road.

"My appreciation for the human capacity to be miserable is unchanged," Cas said serenely. "And nobody makes me as miserable as you." He smiled; Dean didn't.

One morning after they had been there about three weeks, Dean came back from a walk wet from the mist. "You guys, Sam's been wanting to give you an update about this hoodoo person he talked to in Louisiana," Tim called from his office/bedroom.

"It's just me," Dean closed the door. "Is Cas in one of his trances somewhere?"

But Cas wasn't anywhere in the house. And he never appeared from outside.

Dean's sense of resignation was so great that he had nothing to say about this completely expected turn of events. It was Tim who told Sam that their angelic friend was gone.

"Did he break up with you? Was he kidnapped? Following a lead? What was the last thing he said, Dean?" Sam interrogated through the phone.

But there was nothing to say about this abandonment that Dean had been causing in slow motion for so long. He listened with half an ear to the mixture of nagging and sympathy coming from his brother. "Do you want me to come see you? Do you want to meet me here in Louisiana?" he finally heard.

"Nah," he said and could finally hang up. His brother communicated with Tim mostly after that. Dean was surprised to see how often they talked, and he had to admit, the guy could do a damn good fake FBI agent over the phone.

Dean began biking over to simple fix-it jobs—cars on people's lawns, tractors, lawn mowers, until he made enough of a name for himself for people to start coming to him. His host cared so little about everything else that he also didn't care about giving up part of the yard to a car or motorcycle being repaired. Dean put his name in a local labor pool and helped raise a few barns, patch a few roofs and other construction jobs, preferring the ones where he could work alone. When he had to rub shoulders with others, he let his work speak for itself.

With Tim, it was one phantom living with another phantom, so there was no cause for conflict in the little house as the weeks turned into months. Dean and Tim spoke the bare minimum, and the two Winchesters scarcely at all.

Sam came through every once in awhile to inspect his two charges. When he walked in the door it was the only time Dean really felt like something dreadful was happening to him. His brother's eyes reflected back some deep concern that Dean didn't feel was warranted. After all, he was healthy-it was like a regular exercise studio in Tim's basement, and what with all the lugging of auto parts and lumber his body was more robust than ever. With one exception.

It was hard to tell if Dean felt nothing in particular about Cas' absence because he was so relieved not to be stuck in a cycle of rejection and guilt. Or if it was the result of some astral-body bruise that Cas had begun to isolate in his two patients before he left. Regardless, Dean endured another monastic phase with this inscrutable person named Tim who had somehow made it into his inner circle, and did his best to forget he had a body.

He nodded to a few familiar faces in the community hub that was a grocery store and a squalid strip mall. Dean thought his own modest origins were all it took to blend in with that working class community. After a short time people seemed to stop trying to place him and he became another fixture on the bleak rural landscape. After all, as far as his customers were concerned he could talk cars with the best of 'em, and that's what men do, isn't it?

"Hey, nice tat," a redneck guy said with a hint of mockery one warm day when Dean rolled out from underneath a vehicle and stood up without a shirt.

"I think so," Dean said, wiping his hands. "Turns out I'm going to have to order the part for this. It might set you back some, Gene. You willing to pay more than the hundred I quoted you?"

"So I guess what people are saying is true," the man pursued while looking a little too closely at Dean's body for his taste.

"That a Toyota pickup ain't built to last like a Chevy?" Dean walked over to a wooden table with his tools and his shirt draped over it and had a drink of water. "Next time, buy American, man."

"Naw, that you an' him—" the beefy man nodded towards the house, "You're all—" he made a lewd gesture with his fingers. "Homos. And together. I mean, the other one, I could tell what he was the first time I saw him in the Bestway, but you, I didn't know for sure whether you was too until I saw that tramp stamp there."

"You can see all that from one look at one guy's face and another guy's back? You must be some student of human nature," Dean's new Zen perspective said, aware that he would've slugged the guy one under normal circumstances. This way was going to be more fun.

His customer grinned while demonstrating a very keen interest in one particular specimen of humanity.

"If you can read people that well, then you already know that I can beat or kill you in so many different ways I only haven't because I'm having trouble making up my mind." Dean took in the laughter calmly. "But then, you'd also know I'm not in the mood to make your day like that." The laughter stopped. "That's right. You've heard of the saying, 'It takes one to know one?' I see something in you too, Gene, and it would just love to lay a hand on me and call it an ass-whupping."

The face was turning purple and he tossed the truck keys at it. "I'm going to send you away from here with something worse than the busted nose you have coming to you. I'm sending you away with the question—what exactly did I see in you? I'll answer you the other one—no, I wouldn't do you, never in a million years."

The man made a move, proving Dean's axiom that a lot of big guys are slow because they'd never had to learn to be fast. Occasionally you'll come across a Sam, who was big and fast and nearly lethal because of it, but this fellow's fist seemed to be moving in slow motion compared to the tempo of Dean's usual souped-up spirit-fights.

The gun was out from where it had been hidden underneath his shirt in plenty of time for Dean to stand there and watch Gene's shock. "You need to take better care of yourself: I could've killed you before you even knew what hit you," he advised. "Maybe you don't know people as well as you think, Mean Gene. So here's some friendly advice from the gay community"—he gestured to the house—"to Assholeville, where you live. If you or any of your knuckle-dragging cronies ever come on this property or give me and my friend," he emphasized the word, "a hard time, I'll take a kneecap," he lowered the gun, "for every single thing that ruffles my delicate fairy-like sensibilities, and you know how my kind gets emotional. And when I run out of those, wait and see what I start on next." The gun inched upwards. "That ink marks me as your worst nightmare and your biggest wet-dream rolled into one," he winked, "but your real concern should be that I don't give a shit about anything anymore." The safety clicked off. "You feel me? Not literally, I wouldn't want you to get too excited."

The guy scrambled into his Toyota that was still making its knocking sound and squealed away, leaving his other car in an empty field across the way. Damn. Dean should've thought about the guy having to come back for it. He had no regrets about the first real experience of harassment indicating that somewhere along the line Dean had started to "scan" as a man-loving man. It all seemed so academic now that he couldn't stand to get within a yard of one.

The hunter came in and laid his gun on the kitchen table where Tim was getting ready for lunch. "I forgot how much fun it is to threaten people. Especially those that are giving me a 'bad touch' feeling with their eyes."

"Gene Thurston?" Tim nodded at the abandoned car with a knowing air. "I thought about charging admission for how much he enjoys running into me in the shopping center. Those whistles he directs at me for the amusement of his friends at the diner are the only action I get these days. You must've made his life by taking your shirt off."

"So by the way, there might be some rednecks coming after me, you know, no big deal. Hey, you want to learn how to set a booby trap?"

It was then that Dean began to see Tim's allure—he had a certain genius for creatively devious solutions to things. The two men began setting up traps outside the house to catch any people who wandered too close, as people did appear out of the woods from time to time with the pretext of foraging or hunting. Gene and a couple of other overly curious locals fell in a few holes or got strung up by their feet, and working on the perfect redneck trap was the best entertainment Dean could wish for.

That and going to town with his roommate to watch themselves being watched. Once or twice Dean returned from the liquor store with a small bottle of something girly like strawberry vodka mixed in with the industrial quantities of whiskey and gin, Tim's drink of choice, but free booze was never an insult as far as he was concerned. Anything to help pass the time.

Where finding creative ways to string up the meddlesome locals kept his skills sharp, Dean saw Tim similarly coming to life whenever Sam called. The wan face was lit up by a smile, he searched the web or pulled out his Ouija board and called up God knows what as if he really cared about something for a few minutes.

"You been bitten by the hunter bug I guess," Dean said one evening. "Sam sure speaks highly of your abilities, and my little brother almost never says anything nice about me."

"He's been real good to me. My parents still haven't recovered from thinking I had a steroid habit, and I can't talk about what I brought on myself to them. That's the thing about you Winchesters, I noticed it from right off—you've got too much going on to play the judgment game for long. You're easy, in a way. Sam asks me to do something and I do it. It's the one part of my life I feel all right about."

There was a glum silence.

"This is the curse, right? Or the lack thereof?" Dean ventured on that night, another long empty alcohol-tinged evening among so many. "Or were you this much of a basket case before? No shame, Tim, I really just need to know."

"Happy people don't spend over a year chasing down the two halves of a good luck talisman. But no, I wasn't living this half-life." His mouth twisted at the reference to his skinny physique as compared to the one Dean first met. "I'm not sure it's supernatural at all. More like you get something you were never meant to have, and once it's gone you've tasted the forbidden fruit. I could've gone through life never knowing for sure what it felt like to walk into a room and have people look at me instead of through me. Before I just thought I was boring."

"What I hear you get up to with the ether, you are not boring, pal," Dean chuckled. "Who did you have on the hook last night? Some totally whacked Russian guy?" Occasionally Tim would channel something and have Dean read from a list of questions he'd prepared.

"Rasputin. Yeah, he was way into the occult in his day, and Sam made me promise I'd include him on our list of stones not to leave unturned in Cure Quest."

That's how the two men referred to what they were supposed to be doing way out in Arkansas, though all that solution-mindedness had left with Cas.

Dean got two more beers from the fridge and finally asked another question that had been on his mind but he couldn't bring himself to ask it. "If I can make you my Gay-Guide once more," he'd learned how much he still had to learn from his conversations with Tim, "Is it like, normal for gay guys to get off on being—objectified?" Many similar frank talks had helped Dean and Tim arrive at the conclusion that this was the part of the curse still affecting Dean: his need to be the person Cas had controlled and desired with no thought to his comfort or dignity, an identity that was embodied in one part of himself.

"Good sex is always a little kinky, I think. Your fantasies sound really—all in a certain direction," Tim acknowledged. They'd talked about Dean's obsession with being marked, literally or figuratively, his great nostalgia for the way Cas used to direct him in their fetish activities, being treated like something to be owned or—better yet—rented. And above all, his aching need to have a certain part of his body so plump, so unable to be ignored, that it proclaimed he was made to be used. As Dean found the first time he was taking time out with Tim, it was easy to coexist with him. At the very least he had a listening ear when he wanted one.

"And that's not part of the package for most guys?"

"There's plenty of guys who get off on submission, but there's also a ton of doms who will make these guys' fantasies come true. You don't see the way Cas' eyes eat you up when you're not looking. I would've thought it impossible that he ever had a hard time getting with you before, but he must know something nobody else knows about the gay gene." Tim poured them each a shot. "That has to be where Cas is. Doing his science thing trying to help you." That had seemed a likely possibility at first, but when no coded message ever arrived to reassure Dean that his boyfriend was still alive and still his boyfriend, it seemed like a long shot now.

"Ah, I kind of hope he's forgotten all about me. Maybe he's moved on to someone who's not all screwed up."

"Next on my list is someone who doesn't surround their dwelling with booby traps," the hoarse voice said.

"Cas! Are you okay?" Dean jumped up a little unsteadily. He was so off his game he'd let the visitor get the drop on him.

"If I didn't know you so well, that would've been my leg instead of a stick caught in that trap. And yes, I am fine." The newcomer walked very deliberately towards Dean and wouldn't let him flinch away from his close embrace.

Suddenly Dean was able to pull himself far enough back that he could see what he'd been feeling: the contours of Cas' arousal were much larger than usual.

Impossibly much.

Tim was looking from Cas' midsection to his face and back again in quick succession. "I think I'll just—" he left the room.

"What have you done to yourself?" Dean asked, all the other questions like, where were you, why did you leave, why didn't you contact me, sort of falling in line after that.

Cas sat Dean down and directed his attention back to his crotch, whose outline was now the normal size.

Now Dean was really freaking out, not sure whether he wanted to have hallucinated that sight or not. "Your—it—you—it was—"

His partner smiled. "Watch." He withdrew the member Dean had missed so much and over the space of a few minutes it grew, changed shape and thickness.

Dean stared uncomprehendingly at the flexible length of skin before him. "You've been away for almost eight months to give yourself an upgrade in the privates? Couldn't you have sent an email saying, 'It's Thursday, and by the way, when the mood strikes I'm like the man from Nantucket—'?"

"No, Dean. Look again." Cas held something on one finger while he tipped up Dean's chin so that they were looking at each other in the eye. He slowly tilted his head until the light caught him just so.

The hunter scrambled backwards from the now-unfamiliar face whose eye was flickering silver in the lamplight.

"Freaking shifter! How did you find me?" Nothing remotely otherworldly had come his way since he'd gone into hiding in Arkansas and now Dean was kicking himself for thinking Cas had come back to him. "You sick fuck, if you wasted him I swear to God—" He pulled out the kitchen drawer where he kept some of his ammo and had the silver knife at the interloper's throat in short order.

"I'd really hate for you to slit my throat before we see if my technique can fix your difficulties," the face that was once again Cas said with a twinkle in both of its creepy eyes now exposed.

"No, Cas, not a shifter." He had no idea what had happened while they'd been apart, but the last thing he wanted was this. "There is no way my boyfriend is going to be one of those skin-shedding sociopaths leaving piles of gloop behind!" Cas' face was so boyish and pleased with itself Dean couldn't work up the proper hatred. He changed tack. "People are going to hunt you down, Cas. Starting with Sam. Why would you take on one more strike against us?"

"As long as there's still an 'us' I would do more than this," the growly voice said to his ear. "Do you not want to hear about all the wonderful things we will be able to do with practice?" The voice dropped even lower. "All the things I will be able to do with you."

Dean shivered despite himself and placed the silver knife on the table. "I'm listening."

After existing in a state of suspended animation for so long, Dean's mental gears ground painfully into motion to follow all the technical aspects of what Cas narrated with his eternal youthful excitement.

Cas described his original idea that had compelled him to steal away without warning. He thought of isolating the genes controlling a particular body part and introducing a mutation that would reshape that part. It seemed so much more possible than the more amorphous traits that went into sexual preference, which he'd sought to control before.

"It was a disaster, Dean. The procedures I carried out upon fruit flies and salamanders and a few mice were enough to convince me it could never be attempted upon people. Runaway tumors and horribly misshapen morphology. I was about to lose hope. And it didn't seem right to give you any, either."

"Maybe you lost something else." Dean had had to position the other man so his eyes didn't glint in the light or he was incapable of sitting next to him.

"The people in the lab had time to work on some of the information I was able to recall the last time I was there, and they had plenty of intriguing ideas to pass the time. One day I was meditating on the parts of the human organism I remember examining, and I thought about the shapeshifters. This is a very old mutation that acted as a sort of linchpin for those of us interested in such matters. This single genetic trait would make a person manifest an infinite number of different genetic codes. It was somewhat involuntary, with the previous set of characteristics shed violently because of a sort of immune response to the next set."

"Cas, you chose the dumb Winchester, remember? I have no idea what you just said except 'shed.'"

The visitor leaned forward. "Think of a chameleon. I was able to study them and see that they can make a change in their appearance without needing to shed. Some experiments have indicated they have some control over their color change, even. My aim was to create conscious control over the body's shape beginning with this genetic skeleton key, you might call it, that I remember from shifters."

"So you didn't like, puree one and fuse him into you?"

Cas shook his head. "That would have raised a few questions among the scientists. As it was they didn't know what to think."

The next question from Dean was even more vehement, "You mean you've been playing pull my finger with a bunch of geneticists, and they've been admiring your magic junk?"

"No, Dean. Watch." Cas held up his two hands and his left fingers grew longer than the right. "As far as anyone in the government's employ is concerned, that's all I was able to do, and it still didn't sit well with them. I would never share your particular difficulties, and then I made doubly sure to coat my theories with a veneer of eccentricity. Who knows what kind of use the Department of Defense could find with an army of engineered shifters otherwise. But luckily, these scientists," he shook his head.

"I don't know when was the last time you spent every minute with people who required you to censor yourself lest their worldview crumble," he took Dean's hand. "But it made me miss you and your wonderful ability to take anything in stride very much. No one else could begin to understand who I am."

The very shaken hunter held onto the hand as the only mooring handy. At the same time he was staring at the fingers as if they were going to change into a claw or a paw or something equally inhuman and dangerous.

"So you're saying the way I can go back to having the body I think is mine is to become a mutant—and not just any freak, but the single class of beings that pisses me off the most? You've made yourself an outcast, man. Fallen angel, okay. Whatever Sam is, hunters've gotten over it. But this?" He slumped back on the couch and drank straight from the bottle.

"Perhaps if you had some time to think about it-tinted contacts can fix the eye problem, and there's no other way for people to tell someone possesses the trait unless they shift right in front of them," Cas said, doing a pretty good job at keeping the disappointment out of his voice. "The laboratory will keep my materials the way they are for some time while you decide. It's a multi-step process, you see, and the shelf-life is only minutes at best."

Now it was Dean's turn to be disappointed. "You mean you didn't bring it? How am I going to try it?" He shrugged. "What? It's not like this is living."

He found himself pinned on the floor in no time. "Dean Winchester, you are already the most changeable creature I have ever known. You have made me live through so many terrible moments because of your shifting moods. Why shouldn't your body shift as well?" The stubble rubbed against his face. "You mean you'll do it?"

Cas hugged him, whispering the Enochian syllables that meant he had run out of English words, and Dean didn't mind the proximity so much for whatever reason. They spent another couple of hours discussing the advantages that would come with being able to take on a different appearance and hide from police. Then the talk reverted to their rekindled sex life, soon to have infinite possibilities. They brought themselves off from all the excitement, Dean deeply aroused by the new shape the familiar member had assumed, and then lying down meekly so that Cas could add his own stamp to Dean's stamp.

They got under the covers of the foldaway bed and shared a laugh over Dean's recounting of the lecherous hillbilly's reaction to the tattoo. "The guy was a creep. I could've messed him up bad before he knew what hit him, but I didn't want to get that close, to tell the truth. The traps are more a hobby than anything else. Other people around here build birdhouses."

The silver eyes were studying him. "When I've brought you to bars you've enjoyed the attention from men who drew conclusions about its meaning."

"I wasn't ashamed of it. He was just gross."

"So you still might enjoy—certain things," Cas asked carefully.

He was rewarded by a coquettish look from the other pillow. "If you fix my body, that's still going to leave my brain stuck on being dominated."

"We'll find some way to manage," the throaty voice assured him with relief. Dean was never sure if the uncursed part of their couple felt such a drive to perversion, but maybe Cas had also been so affected by their early habits that he was not anxious to let them go.

Castiel continued, "Although we won't be able to be together like this while we're at NIH. They're too interested in my technique to say no to breaking all the rules about human experimentation, but it will go over better if I portray you as some sort of vagrant rather than my boyfriend."

"Can we give you a tact transplant while we're there?" Dean teased. "Acting like we don't know each other is going to be really hard. Particularly if you're pointing that at me," he said, weighing Cas' assets at the moment. "But we're still not going anywhere until you swear on a stack of Bibles that this doesn't bring my name up on any of the law databases where I'm facing charges."

They argued about the ins and outs of wanted lists until the wee hours of the morning, and then the couple must have dropped off to sleep mid-sentence. Because Dean woke with a start and found Cas across the mattress—not touching him, but with his hand outstretched as if he'd been paralyzed in the act of trying to.

Shortly the silver eyes glinted at him, also taking in the fact that they'd made it through one night together for the first time in a long time. "There's hope, Dean," assured him, running his hands through his partner's hair.

Tim entered the kitchen to turn on the coffee pot. "Hope for you as well, if you want it," Cas called out.

Their host walked over to the bed with a glimmer of interest in the man's normal lackluster expression. "Whatever it is, I'll try it."

They spent the day in a state of anticipation, making plans and then taking a break for a trip to town. There they stocked up on food for the celebratory feast Tim had been inspired to prepare.

Cas and Dean were in the checkout line when Tim appeared with his phone to his ear. "Fine, I'll look into it this afternoon. Talk to you soon, Sam."

Dean froze. "You didn't—"

"I would never," Tim reassured him. "Later—"

"Well, hello Tim and Dean? How have you been?" came the obligatory greeting from the cashier as their turn came in line.

"Hey Arlene." "Howdy, ma'am," the boys replied politely.

"Now who is this, visiting friend or family?" she asked brightly while her hands worked.

"This is Cas," Dean put his arm around him proudly, cover story ready as ever. "He does government contract work that keeps him away more than I'd like."

"We are both very unhappy when we are apart," Cas said seriously, "Perhaps someday he will give me his hand and we will—"

"Cross that bridge when we come to it," Dean finished with a pained smile. When he was away from his boyfriend for a while, he forgot the near-constant threat of embarrassment from his uncensored comments. "I hope your kids are well."

There were some glances form other people in the checkout line, but none of it was unkind, not that Dean was in a mood to care. His experience had told him that humble folks have little to give but their good manners, and so they were always polite to your face.

The trio went home to pitch in on the big meal while Dean gave them both a talking-to. "Tim, I think you know my brother well enough to see that sometimes you have to do things and wait for him to criticize you after. This is a step too far for Sam. Not a word of what we're about to do is breathed in his direction. And that goes double for you, Mr. Oversharers Anonymous."

Predictably, Tim was the one to come up with the only cover story that made sense: one that was close enough to the truth and had one very distracting detail that would smooth over everything else.

They were sitting around having a few drinks after dinner when Dean's phone rang. "Hey, Sammy, what's happening? Guess what: Cas is back. Say 'hey' Cas," he instructed without losing his grip on the phone. "The government likes him so well they've put him on the payroll, and he's bringing me back to live with him." He listened to Sam's objections about his disappearing boyfriend. "Not to worry, Sam, he's making an honest man out of me first: we're getting married. Yes, they let you do that in Maryland, don't you think we would have checked that out first?"

They all grinned at each other as his brother released a slew of admonitions and congratulations for some minutes. "Dude, you can't get married. You're still all fucked up in the head," his brother finally wound up with.

"Give my betrothed some credit, why dontcha? There's an experimental behavioral science unit Cas thinks might be able to help us."

"Us? Who's us?" Sam squawked.

"Tim, of course." He listened to another tirade about exposing friends to experimental treatments. "No way he should be alone the way he is. He's coming with us unless you're going to move in as caretaker."

Dean handed his phone over to their host, who was able to calm the flustered Winchester with that nice manner he had.

"You more than earned your keep already getting Sam to drop that bone for the time being," the elder brother said, clapping Tim on the shoulder. "We work together and Cas will have our treatment finished before Sam starts asking questions."

"I have a lot at stake here, too, guys," Tim said, carrying his drink up to the attic. "Good night."

It was a means to an end, but Dean was surprised to see Cas very concerned about getting married the right way. "I wouldn't feel right not asking your brother for your hand in person first," he kept saying.

"Shut up and do me," Dean ordered. Though their motions were still truncated by all his body image issues, there was more than enough hope—and Cas—to go around. They managed to find each other, in a way, all the same.


	9. Chapter 9

There was a party atmosphere in the Impala as the three drove from West Virginia to Maryland. Tim was dozing at first because he'd been working nonstop to finish up a few design jobs before they left, but soon hopeful plans were being traded back and forth among the men while Cas told amusing stories about the people they would meet at the Human Genome Project. Dean was counting on the adrenaline that always came before doing something massively dangerous to carry him through the entire experience, but as they neared Rockville he started to fall silent.

"It will be fine, Dean," his lover reassured him, his eyes looking normal with the tinted contacts.

Facing a cannibalistic creature? All in a day's work for a hunter. But this was going to be laying his head in the lion's mouth—or the gaping maw of government bureaucracy, more like it—and the only word Dean had to go on was the always somewhat otherworldly Castiel's.

As it turned out, when they actually got inside the den of DNA, there were more reasons to fear this dangerous treatment than he'd considered, save one: their drawing undue attention to his police record.

The Winchesters had always thought scientists and the government to be capable of shady dealings. Law enforcement was constantly covering up all the weirdness Dean knew to be100% real, for starters, so he shouldn't have been surprised that government scientists had such flexible moral standards.

Under the cover of night the trio stashed his car in long-term parking and then the two lab rats were brought in through what Cas said was his designated entryway to one of the most sensitive research facilities in the nation.

"Technically, I'm a janitor," Cas had explained, and they'd stopped by a uniform supply store to acquire a boxy uniform for each of them. Their guide scanned his card and the temporary cards that had been provided to the other two through a series of doors.

They walked through some deserted office space and past corridors where the occasional light was on in a laboratory. Dean's nerves were on high alert so that he didn't notice at first that the security officers here and there treated Cas with a certain kind of friendliness.

"Hello, there, Cas, you brought some friends? Are they masters at Trivial Pursuit like you?"

"Yes, that's right, they are my friends." Cas replied with the slightly off intonation that indicated his non-human origins. "No, I don't think their interests lie in that direction."

They finally swiped through the last doorway and stepped through from the dimly lit area into a bright white room.

"All right, you can talk now," Cas said, donning one of a series of white coats hanging from hooks.

"Dude, they think you're like mentally challenged!" Dean finally burst out.

"Yes, on the other side of the gate they think we are all from a group home that provides menial workers unlikely to trade in government secrets," Cas agreed. "Follow me. There are some people I'd like you to meet."

Inside the inner sanctum of genetic research work was in full swing regardless of the late hour. It was a maze of glass, stainless steel and fluorescent light filled with ominous-looking equipment (to Dean's eyes). There were a number of people so focused on their work that they didn't look up until Cas stood in one doorway.

"Hello, Cas," a fiftiesh man of Latin origin said with a different sort of smile than the security guards. A nervous smile. "Let's get the formalities out of the way, shall we?"

Though Dean and Tim had been all for this drastic step, the sheer number of rights they signed away during the next few minutes gave them both pause. When the man had locked away the stack of forms into a safe, he turned back to them. "You can call me Robert," he said. "As you have just read, we've never met. None of this, is in fact, happening. Just as the researcher who will be conducting the experiment," he nodded at Cas, "is not really here. You will be well-compensated for the unlikely possibility of any risks, and I hope that the true reward is knowing that you may help advance the state of genetics by your participation."

The two lab monkeys gazed at each other in alarm. This Dr. Strangelove routine was not what they'd expected.

"Well, make sure your guests have everything they need and by all means, keep those ideas coming, Cas! We've got a team on that idea about progeria and they seem excited," the man said, dropping the ominous air and replacing it with a third kind of smile. "I'm looking forward to seeing what you do here." He shook hands with their friend and then very deliberately turned his back as if washing his hands of the matter.

Cas scanned them into yet another hallway. "This is my wing. While there is video surveillance there is no audio, so as long as you don't face the corners," he pointed, "You can speak freely."

"What the hell?" Dean burst out very freely. "I'd almost rather be in Homeland Security. At least they probably won't harvest my organs while I'm still alive."

"They gave you an entire wing?" Tim inquired, looking around. "Aren't you a man with no past? It seems like it wouldn't be so easy to get hooked up with state of the art equipment." They took in the gleaming sinks and refrigerators and cases of instruments with unfathomable purposes.

"From what I gather, off-the-books experimentation is not unheard-of, hence the existing protocol for human subjects like yourselves," Cas said in his matter-of-fact tone that was the only thing Dean had to cling to. "And I think they put me here to have plausible deniability about what I do, as much as to protect their work from me. Thus, the first-name basis."

There was a desk with a pile of notes, a computer terminal and the only personal touch was a Post-it labeled succinctly, "Cas." The researcher saw his partner taking in the sterile surroundings where the ex-angel had spent so much time trying to save their relationship. It all looked like hell through the eyes of someone who'd never had a desk job.

Castiel pressed play on the streaming radio station on his desktop, and the sound of Dean's kind of music made them both smile for a moment. "They have made me quite comfortable, but I also work very hard. You can see how it's easy to lose track of time in here," he said to Dean. "Let me show you to your rooms."

The two patients nodded a serious goodbye to each other before they were separated, as they were going to receive what were supposedly two different versions of the gene therapy. The space where Dean was to live for the next few weeks wasn't unpleasant: there was a treadmill for exercise and a TV, as well as limited Internet access that did not allow any outgoing data. He changed into the sweat suit provided on the bed and placed his clothes in an envelope as instructed.

"If you need me, press this buzzer. I'm never more than a few yards away and I often nap on the cot in my meditation closet," Castiel said. He pushed an intercom button. "Cindy, this is Cas, how are you? Would you arrange for three meals to be sent up after their physical examinations are completed? Thank you."

A knock came at the door. "Yes, Annette," he said to the white-coated woman with a stethoscope around her neck, "I'd like to observe this physical if you don't mind."

Cas' eyes transmitted reassurance during the next grueling stage, in which he was subjected to an all-over inspection, had an enormous amount of blood taken and then wheeled into another corridor for a CAT scan, an MRI, a PET and the rest of the alphabet's worth of tests.

Dean felt sorry for Tim running the same gauntlet on his own, because his already well-established discomfort with being a patient now had him internally screaming to get out of there.

As a distraction, he tried to put his finger on the way Cas related to these medical muckity-mucks. These were people who had more degrees than he had teeth, but they hung on his partner's every word as if he were still a celestial being. The hunter's GED didn't give him any clue what all the white coats were talking about over his head, but Dean gathered that these were a bunch of know-it-alls who were absolutely freaked by whatever Cas was clued into. And they wanted some of that knowledge so bad they didn't care about bending a few thousand regulations.

Finally they were finished. Dean and Cas sat down before their trays in one glass breakroom, while waving at Tim doing the same in the next room.

"What have you blown these people's mind with, Cas?" he asked, studying his boyfriend as if for the first time.

"I told you, Dean, not everyone is as open-minded as you." Cas smiled sadly. "I thought this was all I could hope for if we couldn't be together. It is a very lonely life, but at least the work is interesting."

They finished their meal without having to say what they were both thinking—that if the therapy didn't work, their relationship was unlikely to either.

Castiel rose. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow I will begin locating the correct spot on your genetic code where we can make the graft. The part you actually witness will be quite dull, I promise."

The only thing interesting over the next few weeks was Dean's study of Cas. When he and Sam took on the new human, they counted upon his knowledge more than his strength, but Cas had turned into a decent hunter rather quickly, save for the social skills aspect. But the two Winchesters had a lifetime of training as well as many years fighting by each other's side, so there was still no comparison between their finely tuned abilities and their new companion's.

In the scientific world, however, Cas was light years ahead of regular mortals with book learning, as the graduate from the school of hard knocks was beginning to see. Watching the deference Cas received from everyone in the top-secret wing made his lover begin to understand what a sacrifice Castiel had been making for him all this time. It was the only life Dean had to give him, but it wasn't much of a life.

Cas always downplayed his location on the heavenly totem pole, but Dean doubted he was exactly small fry in the Heavenly pond. He could tell because now that Cas had been run out of Dodge, the former angel had a hard time avoiding his celestial pals who sought to exploit old allegiances and an insight that transcended the angel/human divide.

But Cas had given up all that glamour for musty motel rooms where he had to sleep on the floor half the time. All to be near Dean.

That realization, combined with how little Dean had been able to offer in the intimacy department, redoubled his determination to succeed at the exercises Cas set for him.

From what he had gathered about Cas' shifting abilities, it took a lot of work to master one body part, and faces were extremely hard to do right. Doing a full-body transformation, such as Tim wanted to achieve, was going to be very challenging, at least at first. For testing purposes, Tim was supposed to only manifest changes in the musculature in his arms, with the idea that this would help him learn how to bulk up all over—something his body had always refused to do on its own. The shift Dean was supposed to share with the class was adding and subtracting a couple inches to his height.

What he heard from Cas was that Tim was picking up the concentration technique pretty quickly. Dean felt he was no less desperate for results, but he'd never meditated a day in his life. When he tried, all his mind did was chase around the idea that this was his last chance to fix this relationship he'd staked everything on.

So the second-place patient sat around for hours a day feeling like a fool. Otherwise he did pushups or yoga and then ran on the treadmill. When he had the chance, he reproached Cas for holding back some key technique that was preventing him from getting his body back.

Cas assured him again and again that he'd shared all the information he had for activating the mutant gene, which was at that moment in Dean's system exactly as it was in Tim's. It was after one of these tense conversations carried on with fake smiles for the cameras' benefit that Dean huffed around his room in frustration and then decided to do some yoga to calm himself down.

He went through the motions, not really looking in the mirror until he glanced up during downward-facing dog. The person who gazed back at him was clenching a pair of buttocks that were opulent compared to the ones he'd been living with.

Dean collapsed in a mixture of shock and relief. His world was round, rather than, flat, again.

He hurried to the bathroom to be away from the cameras so he could reacquaint himself with his lost curves. If this was truly how he looked before, Sam must need glasses, because Dean had plenty to jiggle while he pulled on a sector of his body that, without thinking about it, was also a little more substantial.

Smiling at how pleased Cas would be on several levels, Dean washed himself off and then remembered his assignment. He went before the mirror and did some of the standing and stretching poses he knew. Sure enough, when he gave his body the order to "stand tall," he was able to make himself taller. Having at last located the "skeleton key" in place in his DNA, he found the door wide open for simple shifting. There followed experiments with different heights while chuckling over what Sam would think about being the shorter brother.

Dean froze. The eyes.

His heart pounding at having to face this one very unwanted side effect, Dean tried to make his eyes catch the light. But the lab was either bathed in fluorescent light or completely dark when he slept. He patted the pocket where Cas had distributed contacts to each of them. The other two men had blue eyes that seemed to match the artificial lenses pretty closely, but the person at the costume shop said that Dean's green would take a special order to get an exact match. While he was worrying for the millionth time about Sam's reaction to his brother becoming a monster, he remembered he was supposed to be able to turn the shifts on and off.

This proved unexpectedly difficult. His favorite geneticist surprised him with his scheduled appearance for dinner. "Dean? Are you sick?" Cas worriedly surveyed the covers pulled up to Dean's chin.

The hunter got out of bed—all 6'7" of him with scandalous curves to match bursting out of his clothes after a couple hours of experimentation. "I had a little trouble finding the rewind button."

Both men habitually stood in spots least visible to the cameras, which was good, because otherwise they would have seen an equally scandalous level of arousal under Cas' lab coat. "It causes me great pleasure to think of possessing you like this," he rasped to the foot-taller man before him. "I knew you would manage it, just as I have always known we could have a future if we worked at it. The future has finally come."

Standing stiffly within the bright fluorescent lights in this observation room, the couple didn't have to say or do anything to share the resurgence of their private life.

Then Cas resumed, "We can leave as soon as I can run enough tests to show the action of the mutation in your system." Dean's heart leapt and he took a step towards the door. "But we're not going anywhere if you don't learn how to control the shifts immediately! It could be disastrous for us," his lover hissed, glancing at the cameras. The hunter jumped back into bed.

There was nothing Dean wanted less than to shed the body he'd regained, but he forced his contours to their previous state, only taller. He had to endure a stream of scientists buzzing around him as he demonstrated his new ability while he deliberately failed other tests. He gathered that Tim was also having a hard time restricting himself to his experimental goal.

Dean's most pressing concern after the immense relief of success was that they actually be let out so he and Cas could take his regained body out for a spin. His hunter's instincts had been nagging at him these almost six weeks, letting him know that only a hacker could fool all the security cameras and bust out. Just when he thought of chancing it, Cas came to his room without his white coat and with Tim in tow. "Ready?"

His clothes were returned and the three men were wearing their janitor's coats when they walked through the rest of the high-security wing, which was deserted compared to the last time they saw it. Then Dean got whiplash from the change in his boyfriend's perceived intelligence on either side of the top-secret barrier. They saw only a few people on their way out to the tunnel and then emerged on the street in an uninteresting part of Maryland.

Dean fended off Cas' embrace. "Dean! I thought we were through all of this," came the sharp observation.

"Just wait, let me find a reflective surface." He pulled Castiel along by the hand until he fixed on the side mirror on a car. Turning this way and that, he saw silver. Dean stood there for some minutes taking in the irrevocable thing he'd done in the name of love.

He turned around to Cas' face coated with resignation and pulled the arms around him. The hands had the perfect place to rest in his lower back. "I needed to see my eyes. It's freaky. But I think I can live with it. How do you think I look?" he whispered.

"Like you were made for one thing."

"I'm going to make up for everything I made you miss out on, Cas, you watch me start tonight." He hissed in his lover's ear. "I'm taking requests."

"Ahem, guys—I'm happy, you're happy, we're all happy, but can we be happy somewhere far away from the box I just lived in for over a month?" the old hunky Tim asked with something like his old vitality.

They walked briskly to the garage where Dean had an emotional reunion with the Impala and the freedom it implied. They started driving in the direction Cas indicated as his apartment. "Yeah, I hate to ask, but why did they let us out of Hotel California?"

"Your last couple of lab results indicated catastrophic cellular degeneration," Cas said happily.

Dean swerved and hit the brakes on the side of the road. "The hell?" He glanced to the backseat. "So He-man, you're not concerned about this little surprise?"

Their companion was sitting in the back seat looking smug. "Cas doctored the test results so the NIH would want to wash their hands of us as quickly as possible. It was my idea."

"Don't worry, the institute is used to me being something of a wild card," Cas confided during their short drive. "They're accustomed to me keeping odd hours and behaving strangely—I wanted to make sure they found me unpredictable enough that I couldn't be controlled. The last time I went into a trance in the break room and stayed there for several days, so it won't be too much of a surprise when I don't come back," he said, turning the key in the lock.

The apartment walls were covered with Enochian protection symbols. It was the only personal touch in the pre-furnished space.

"I only need a few minutes to gather my things," Castiel said, coming back from the kitchen with a bottle and three plastic cups.

The two former lushes pounced on the alcohol after their enforced drying-out period. "To Cas, who probably saved my life," Tim toasted.

"To Cas, who's given 'us' a life." Dean had settled on one end of the couch all intertwined with his partner as if reconnecting with an organ he'd been without for too long. The hand fit so nicely in the small of his back that Cas had kept it there.

"To getting back on the road," Cas raised his cup and they drank together for a few minutes before Dean was pulled to his feet.

"Bedroom. Now," their host ordered. "Please excuse us. The sheets are in the closet," he said in a different tone to Tim.

The jeans that were now way too tight with his restored body were pulled down without ceremony. "You have made me wait," the voice growled, "For so long." He ripped off the shirt. "That now I take what's mine, and you take what's mine." Something slid coldly between Dean's roundnesses.

"Wait, don't use a monster on me," he turned around in panic to see if the very large inhabitant that had been in Cas' trousers for some minutes was still there.

"You'll take it and love it," Castiel asserted, turning Dean's head by force so he didn't watch the breach. In reality, it was comparable to what Dean was used to, and with the missing piece to their erotic exertions finally back in place they both moved with abandon.

But gradually, Dean realized he was being filled like never before. His lover was slowly shifting inside of him until he was biting the pillow with pleasure. His climax was almost unbearable. It was paralyzing. Dean could only lie there while his body pulsed around the visitor it had missed so much. The guttural sounds in his ear finally quieted and Cas brought his eyes to meet his.

"Did I hurt you? It seems I really missed this," he said with that indelible innocence while handling the body next to him in a distinctly naughty way.

"Nothing can hurt me anymore," Dean whispered. "Give me a minute and I'll change shape so that it's like my first time, every time."

"No," his lover halted him. "I like seeing what I did to you. I want to do more."

Between them there burned the awareness that any concern about wrecking Dean's body with their games was now beside the point.

"Do anything you want as long as it's not with silver," Dean requested and then lay there to receive every gift with joy.

It was a special kind of bond, their bodies being able to reshape themselves in and around the other. Dean succumbed to a complete trust in the multitude of things Cas had to give him. They murmured fantasies back and forth and within moments desires were made flesh.

They didn't sleep at all that night. There were too many taboos to break and then erase. By the time it was light out, the two had coupled a dozen or more times with the limitless stamina afforded by their shapeshifting abilities and tried on many more shapes before the mirror.

"You look absolutely perfect," Cas said, admiring the mark his evening's exertions had made upon his lover. "Will you stay like this for a little while longer? It's most arousing."

"We promised Tim we'd go out to breakfast," Dean reminded him. It only took him a few minutes to return to form he thought of as himself.

The two men exited the bedroom to get ready for their outing, only to discover that the third of their party was gone.

"Thanks, Cas. You really did save my life, but it's going to take some time for me to put my mind back together, just like you two need some time alone. Dean, I'll call you when the time is right, T."

Within seconds Dean was being possessed on the living room couch, on the floor, as the bodies of Dean and Cas, the couple who finally had a whole apartment to themselves. Together, he and Cas tried on different faces designed just for their breakfast date and then went out to eat, giggling at fooling everyone into thinking that Cas was a tall, athletic redhead and Dean was a Eurasian twink.

For the first time in his life, Dean could do whatever he wanted. He had access to Cas' money now that he'd explained to the NIH's most valuable researcher that it's not wrong to extort a generous salary from the government. He also had the luxury of not having someone trying to kill him always a few steps behind. Also for the first time, he was so happy that every visage he created always had a radiant smile. His life with Cas began for real now that they could be together without anything standing in the way. This was why he sat his fiancé down that first day after they came back from breakfast and told him, "We're not leaving."

"What do you mean?" Cas asked, surprised. "We have to go back to Sam, to what you do."

"I've barely been there for Sam, let's face it," Dean pointed out with some guilt. "And you've done enough sacrificing for me, baby." Shyly, he uttered the endearment that had also grown naturally out of their perfect night. "Those people at NIH think you can still walk on water, and you can probably save a lot more lives there than by the few werewolves we manage to take out."

The other man sat there in silence for some time. "Unless you want to go back on the road," Dean offered reluctantly. Castiel got up suddenly, leaving a confused Dean on the couch. "We can do whatever you want, Cas," he called into the bedroom.

Something warm was placed in his hand.

"I bought these without you, thinking that we could size ourselves to fit," came the soft-spoken explanation to the ex-hunter who was staring at the silver ring as if he needed an instruction manual. "Perhaps you can choose the ones we add on the day we actually… make vows."

"Will the silver burn, if silver bullets and knives can hurt us?" Dean inquired of the person who'd had time to experiment with the effects of silver upon a mutated system.

"No, especially because this is not pure silver, but as you can feel, it creates a warming sensation on the skin, a nice reminder of what we are together, don't you think?" And then their hands were not the only thing conjoined.

Everything would have been perfect, had Dean not been dreading the postponed reunion with Sam.

"Don't worry about me, brother, you get a ticket out of the life, you take it," Sam reassured him when the couple announced they were staying in Maryland indefinitely. "If I had a sugarmama drop out of the sky, I'd shack up with her too."

Dean paused, embarrassed that the image of him as a kept almost-spouse was very accurate. "I'm going to get a job," he said defensively.

At the same moment his brother asked, "So, when's the big day? Right now the West Coast has had a rash of vampire attacks so you need to give your best man advance notice. You're not going to make me dress up, are you?"

"Nah, Sammy, strictly casual, you know me and Cas don't care about things like that. By the way, I'm about to walk into a store so I might lose you." He clicked off before Sam could ask any more questions.

Dean had acquired the special-order contacts that Cas swore were an exact match to cover his reflective irises, but hunters always know these things. In previous years he'd moved through the DC area several times hunting various creatures, so there was no hope that he could just shut out the supernatural world as if it didn't exist. But he was sure going to try.

As a precaution, he made Cas move to someplace less depressing, where Dean, the member of the leisure class, usually went in and out as a 6'4" Italian-looking guy with wavy black hair that he and his lover cooked up as someone they could live with for a while. That was one of the several fake IDs he was accumulating in his spare time, reflexively creating backstories and getting defunct Social Security numbers and lines of credit to match while making Cas do the same. Long experience had told the hunter it was important to have multiple getaway plans, and now that he had a life worth protecting, all of Dean's training was going into making sure no one could ever take it away from them.

Plus, it was fun to be different people. One of Dean's major distractions was the new video hobby he could now indulge freely. A lifetime of improv and many years of watching pornography made Dean a surprisingly good skinflick director.

While Cas was at work he planned everything—the scenarios, their bodies, the camera angles, how he would edit the shots together. Dean discovered that it was kind of like rebuilding an engine, this whole planning a few minutes for maximum erotic effect. Of course, Cas still sounded like Cas no matter what voice he used, but the huge number of subscribers to their page on the amateur porn site they belonged to indicated that no one cared about the slightly odd speech patterns that were so endearing to his partner.

The two were so obsessed with each other they had no desire to ever invite strangers into their intimate lives again. But that didn't stop them from enacting scenes in which Cas was one man, and then another, complete with different faces, voices and bodies, so that Dean could edit them together and make it seem like had two customers simultaneously. They especially enjoyed watching those together.

For that was one of their recurring fantasies: Dean as an escort with a body made to bring pleasure, a tramp who was powerless to control his urges. Call it the aftereffects of a wish that involved an over-focus on the body, Dean didn't care what you called it. He doubted his relationship would ever want for titillation.

This went on for months while his fiancé worked on some gene therapy Dean couldn't hope to understand. They used and abused each other so urgently that they had to set rules about sleep. The infinite variations within their grasp only served to highlight their link—they could trust each other enough to transform into anything, for a little while. But their favorite was still regular old Castiel using his lean frame upon the slightly rounder Dean.

The only thing they occasionally fought about was getting married. "You want to do it, let's go down to City Hall and get a license," Dean said, draped all over Cas as he was these days. "Sam can drive in for a couple hours and be on his way."

"I wouldn't feel right about taking such a step unless I spoke to Sam personally," was Cas' frequent complaint. "Why don't we meet up with him somewhere? I could use a break from the lab and we haven't traveled at all since your treatment."

"Next week. I promise," Dean would always hedge.

"These semi-opaque contacts take care of the problem very well, all our tests have proved it," Castiel coaxed. "I want to become totally one with you. There is no marriage among angels, so this is very meaningful to me." Then the sweetness grew darker. "Do you need me to show you all the things you have asked me to do for you? To you?"

He switched on one of their more s/m videos and the discussion was dropped until the next time.

Sam mentioned Tim from time to time in their several-times-a-week phone conversations, and the older brother had admitted that whatever the experimental behavioral therapy had been, Tim was slightly better because of it. Dean was glad, but he was too busy enjoying his own happiness.

One day he was busy walking around DC's gay district, en route to one of the bar/cafes where he'd developed a particular identity so that he could get out of the apartment during the day. He felt a little tingle.

Come to think of it, he'd felt something drawing his attention in that neighborhood a couple times recently, just for a moment, he now realized, even as another part of his brain was berating himself for being retired and thus anything his Spidey-sense might be telling him was moot. Without being able to control it, his body swiveled towards the source of the feeling.

It was a fetish shop. A male and female mannequin pair were clad in a scanty combination of pleather and metal designed to cause a definite tingle. "Hmm, I bet Cas might like that," he thought, considering the male outfit.

But the real thrill came when he thought about what Cas might say to the other outfit.

He spent the rest of the day trying to transform across the ultimate taboo, which despite his vast experience with ladies took some serious medical research to get right. The end result was based upon one of his favorite porn stars back when he was a platinum member of the online Busty Asian Beauties. He was so hot it distracted him from the odd feeling that he was leaving the house without his pants, when he'd left behind something a little more pertinent with this body.

Expecting it to be kind of awkward to go out in public as a girl, where he was sure to walk wrong and he was terrified to open his mouth and speak with a voice that made him jump it was so high, Dean seriously enjoyed going out wearing this chick. He stored up all the looks he got from interested men so he could relive them with Cas later, and then, once he'd bought an absurd amount of clothes and, especially, underwear, Dean was practically stopping traffic wearing clothes designed to fit this body.

He got up the courage to go into the fetish shop and try on the outfit in the window that had apparently been suggesting this whole busty beauty scenario to his subconscious for a few weeks now.

"This was made for you, honey," the Betty-Page-looking girl running the shop approved as the transformed Dean modeled the red shiny outfit. "But you said you wanted to try the black. Let me see if we have your size in the back room."

The woman returned with the package and handed it behind the curtain to the Dean who was running his hands over this body he couldn't believe was his. The door chimed and he heard it open and shut. "Oh great! I really need a coffee break. You must have read my mind. Did you remember the Splenda this time?" he heard the shopkeeper ask.

"For you, always," came a young male voice.

The woman chatted with what must be her habitual coffee delivery person while Dean's entire body tingled. He finally mastered his fear enough to peek out and saw a white guy of about twenty, longish hair, leaving the shop.

A flash of silver was reflected in the glass door as he exited. Dean couldn't be sure, but he feared that the eyes were also trying to get a glimpse of him, the other shapeshifter that had undoubtedly caused an identical tingle.

"Sorry I forgot about you in there," the proprietor called. "Do you like the black better?"

Dean came out fully dressed and handed her back the package. "It's red all the way. My fiancé is going to love it," he said with a voice that he hoped sounded breathy with excitement.

Dean prepared the surprise for Cas' return with much less gusto than he'd had earlier. The day's revelations were beyond disturbing. He didn't want to be linked to real psycho-shifters in any way, much less have them know he was around. And that girl at the shop was so nice. She talked him through "her" nervousness about buying the outfit, giving advice on accessories—maybe it was his first experience with girl bonding, but Dean couldn't just leave her to some ghastly fate that surely awaited her when the shifter that was creeping on her made his move and was rejected. It was an MO the hunter was familiar with. Dean was on the job again, whether he liked it or not.

To force himself to think of something else while his mind churned away at these new problems, he tried on the red crinkly outfit and did up his face and hair in various styles until he had the right effect.

Cas texted him that he was close to home and picking up Chinese. Dean stood by the door, wondering if the same tingly feeling was mixed in with all the pleasure and excitement saturating their new life together. He was awash with anticipation every time Cas was due home, so it was impossible to tell, though maybe they should experiment with it—he was thinking when his boyfriend walked in.

The takeout he was carrying dropped to the floor.

"Hey there, big boy," the tall woman purred, snapping a whip in her hands and tossing her jet-black ponytail. "Clean up that mess or I'll punish you. If you're really good, I'll punish you harder."

Cas began scrambling to pick up the food and Dean's melodic voice burst out laughing. "The look on your face, Cas. It's like you almost would let me."

The craven look he received confused Dean. "What? I thought you cured your heterosexual gene, or whatever. This was a joke." He wasn't ready to admit how much he'd enjoyed walking around like a lady. Then his lover crept over and began exploring his new surfaces with something more than academic interest.

"I didn't get rid of my old interests, only added new ones. Since my treatment I've tested a consistent 4 on the Kinsey scale." His lips found the red-painted mouth. "That means I still appreciate this very much."

Dean pushed him away. "Are you still interested in women, this whole time?"

"No, only you," the mouth said all over him, her, on another long night.

Dean discovered sensations he could never have prepared for. Nothing was missing. On the contrary, it made him appreciate Cas more as a man, as a lover, for all the things he showed him about this borrowed body. Dean finally could forgive Cas for chasing so many skirts, if that experience meant they could do _that_ and _that_ and _those_, whenever they felt like it.

His first night as a vixen was such a revelation that Dean forgot the bad news he had to share.

"Hey Dean, sorry, hunter's hours, I wanted to give you some advance notice," Sam said when Dean called him back shortly after the phone call came in at 3 am.

"That's okay Sammy, I couldn't find my phone." Actually, Dean couldn't find his Dean, and it took him a few minutes to get his voice back to normal. He'd barely held himself back from answering the phone as a chick, which would've been disastrous, and talking to Sam without everything back in place would have been disturbing. "Advance notice for what?"

"You're out of the loop these days, but some hunters in the DC area told me they might have a shifter on their hands. I've got Tim with me so your two witnesses can show up at your wedding after I take care of this one. Man, I've got some payback I want this thing to eat. Maybe it's the one who put you on America's Most Wanted. You want in?"

"I'm in," Dean said.

He told a serious Castiel about the earlier incident with the shifter and Sam's impending visit.

"It will be all right," Cas whispered to the form that was regaining its impressive female features. "And we can finally get married. This may be a blessing in disguise."

It might have been because he was a girl at the moment, but Dean cried in Cas' arms at the fear that their perfect life together was about to be fractured.


	10. Chapter 10

Dean could've picked the two hunters out of a crowd easy even if he hadn't worked a job with them years ago. It was something in the way transient, nocturnal creatures seemed to become instantly at one with a bar, any bar, even a half-empty one in the middle of the day like the one Dean had chosen for the meet-up.

They moved carefully, which ordinarily would make him glad they were armed, but today made him fervently hope that none of their silver got turned on him. Totally back in the zone by now, the once-again hunter sat drinking an iced tea and half-watching the game so he could allow them to make the first move.

The boots sounded against the wood floor close to him. "Well, if it isn't Dean Winchester," began one of them, a man of about 45 of mixed African-American ancestry who went by Zip—Dean had no idea what his real name was.

"You look—" He allowed his features be evaluated by the younger man, Evan—about Dean's age but the eternal frat boy. With an internal shudder, Dean realized he'd been saved from just such a fate by Cas. He knew he must look so much happier than ever before, and probably a lot healthier than these guys had ever seen him.

His green eyes trained on theirs without flinching. "'Betrothed' is the word you're looking for, I think, pal. Good to see you, Evan, Zip." He shook their hands and motioned to the bartender, "What're you fellas drinking?"

They settled into the old familiar routine, catching up on jobs worked in the ten years since they'd met up. "How long do you think this shifter has been in town?" was the question Dean had just asked when Evan burst out, "Why did you do it?"

He froze for a second, his voluntary mutation bursting into his mind before realizing how hard the news of his new orientation must have hit the hunter world. Dean chuckled. "Why did I end up with a dude? Life's too short to get hung up on details."

He saw that both men seemed unconvinced that marrying a dude was a mere detail, and then he remembered that other detail he was hoping to gloss over. He returned to the case and began recounting his own intelligence amassed over the last two days. It was all true, but related out of order so that he didn't have to tell them about where he was and who he was when he encountered the shifter.

"So the reason why I wanted to know how long you've been tracking it here is because I think I came across a pile of that gloop it sheds the other day, not realizing what it was," he concluded.

"Boy, you really must be losing your edge if you don't know shifter-sludge for what it is," Zip snarked.

"As it happens, I was in this bar, I'd had a few and went into the john to take a leak. When I came across the single nastiest bar bathroom stall on the planet. I ran out of there pretty fast, but it seemed that whatever was in that bowl was—of a strange consistency. And what I thought was a condom mixed in was probably an ear, looking back."

His nausea was genuine and had the same effect on his listeners.

"It shifted in a bar you go to?" was all Evan was worried about. "Does that mean it is, you know, like you?"

Actually, the creature was uncomfortably similar to Dean.

A lifetime of conning people was useful when you were lying to your own kind, Dean consoled himself. "Is the shifter gay? I think when you can be any gender you want, that doesn't really apply. Look guys, you haven't met Cas yet. Maybe you've heard some shit about when he was a big cheese." Zip, especially, looked noncommittal. "But let me tell you, he was never like those other humorless pricks. And I think we've all come across plenty of weirder things than a couple people who make each other happy. Do you want to hear what I found out or not?"

He described going back to the gay-friendly district at night with his tiny camera, hoping to catch proof of the shifter, until Dean finally saw the young guy whose eyes flared in the light delivering coffee to the fetish shop.

"Not bad," Zip said, nodding at Dean and Cas' hidden camera, heretofore only used for smut, which he demonstrated clipping to his shirt. "Easier than getting traffic camera footage. You got a picture we can look at?"

"I do," Dean pulled out his phone and the men studied the blurry image of the young man of about 20, longish, light-colored hair with eyes that clearly flared for the camera. "But nobody that looks like this works in any coffee shop in the area. He could be hiding his tracks, taking on different forms to protect this identity he's developed to cozy up with the shop owner. A really nice gal, Kitty."

"Wait. You know the owner of this, this place?" Evan was pointing at the flyer advertising Miss Kitty's Curiosity Shoppe and all the wonders it contained therein.

"Yeah, after I told her I was a fed we got real cozy," Dean said with enough sarcasm to hide the real circumstances of that meeting. "You want to get to know her, Ev? She'd whip you into shape in no time." Zip joined him in laughter at the younger man's conflicted expression.

Then Dean got serious. "Cas is keeping an eye on her right now while trying not to tip our hand. It's hard to keep a low profile without making her think her stalker is us. We'd appreciate some help on that front while we try to gather more intel."

While the other two hunters discussed a surveillance rotation and possible next steps, Dean considered all the advantages and disadvantages that came from his new status astride the human-monster divide. It made surveillance a snap: he and Cas could go in the store or follow Kitty at regular intervals wearing different people and she was none the wiser. But each time they did so, it was at risk of tipping off the shifter they were trying to protect her from.

They didn't even know how far away this tingle of recognition thing happened, or whether their quarry felt it more intensely than they did. The shop was surprisingly busy because the proprietor took special orders from miles around DC, the gay Mecca for the mid-Atlantic. So far the hidden camera they'd installed near the cash register hadn't caught any suspicious-looking people yet.

"Since you guys know the area, why don't you let us take over watching the filly," Zip offered, evidently taking into account his partner's reluctance to comb through the area's gay bars. "You saw one of the faces it's using. No sense of where it's holing up?"

"We haven't patrolled all the sewers, but so far no entrance jumps out at us," Dean shook his head. He didn't tell them about the test strips he and his lover had been using to check for any skin temperature reaction as they examined the city's underworld. The dermal temperature readers were lifted from Castiel's lab and looked like a bandaid, but Dean kept his covered up by his watch.

He listened with half an ear as the two hunters narrated the couple of shifter killings on the East Coast that Dean didn't have much trouble finding once he began to look. Same pattern as St. Louis, someone trying to muscle in on the relationship they couldn't have themselves. It was a brutal reawakening to the ugly world Dean had tried so hard to shut out.

"I guess you want a piece of this one bad, if it's the same one that made you a wanted man. I'd hate anything that stole my face, shifty mutants," Zip observed.

"You better watch out, Dean," Evan said before Dean could think of an answer.

"Huh?" he asked, distracted at having just been called shifty.

"If you're so happy with your fella, maybe this thing'll try to horn in on your good time. That's its MO," Evan joked.

"He'll see how far he gets with that," was all Dean said. This was one thing he wasn't worried about. Cas borrowed the test strips originally to help figure out whether the two mutated systems known as Castiel and Dean had an effect on each other. The couple did experience a slight increase in dermal temperature from proximity to each other, even if they didn't know the other man was near. Whether it was subtle because they weren't full shifters, or because they had so many other reactions to each other at the same time, it didn't matter. Dean was sure no one could fake the feeling of wellbeing he got from his boyfriend.

Dean stood up and placed some bills on the counter. "I got this one, fellas. You all set with digs and everything? I wish I could offer you more than a corner of the floor, but with Sam and a friend coming, Cas and I are full up."

Evan paled and Zip answered quickly. "We're all set. Thanks." They walked out into the street together. "When does Sam get in town anyway?"

"Tonight, he says. He was driving from Seattle. We'll regroup with you boys later on."

The only thing about that tense experience that brought a genuine smile to Dean's face was when he caught Evan checking out his bum when the hunters parted ways.

He headed home, hoping to catch some shut-eye. It had been a frenetic couple of days with little sleep and mounting questions. Dean and Cas were beginning incorporate some tricks that must be used by the monster they were tracking. First, no matter how unimpressive the form chosen by their near genetic cousin, the things were super-strong. Sam and Dean had the ass-kickings from a shapeshifter in cheerleader form to prove it.

This meant that the musculature underneath the physical manifestation was built differently than a regular human's, as compact as braided steel. When Dean went out as Mikiko, the Asian girl who bought the costume from Kitty, it was not only a good cover identity for surveillance purposes. It was to protect the store owner with a body that could break someone's bones without breaking a nail.

To some extent, they could delay sleep by shifting, as well, but that still didn't give Dean much time to hide everything in the apartment he didn't want his brother to see (the porno studio, the women's clothes, the men's clothes in several sizes). At least he could count on the cagey Tim to be a good enough liar to help distract from their shared mutant state.

When the knock came at the door Dean was all jittery even though Cas held him with confidence. But when Dean looked through the peephole, he could only see his brother and some gorgeous woman. He should've thought his brother might bring a plus-one to this wedding that seemed increasingly unimportant, was all Dean thought. The Tim who must be out of view was going to get the couch.

"Hey, Sammy," he said cheerfully, throwing open the door. "And this is?"

Dean completed his own question because the jittery feeling suddenly made sense.

"This is Tim," Sam said with a grin. "He didn't want me telling you that while he was in that program you had him in, he decided to definitely do it. I saw him a couple times while he, she, was transitioning but he, she, wanted people to see the end result. Sorry, the pronouns kind of trip me up."

The younger brother misunderstood the shock on Dean's face. "No worries. He paid that doctor using that money the government paid you for the study. No blackmail. No mob. And you've gotta admit, this surgeon knew what he was doing."

Actually, the results were far too good to be the result of surgery. Tim was every bit of a rockin' babe as Dean was when he so chose. How could Sam not see that? Oh. Tim was smart enough to leave his Adam's apple. As any sex change would have.

"I'm still going by Tim because I can't decide what name I want to commit to," a lovely voice assured them. "Right now, I'm not even too particular about pronouns. It's all kind of new."

From this, Dean gathered something that he must have suspected all along, Tim had no real interest in being a woman. But he had always demonstrated a great interest in Sam.

"You look lovely," Cas said gallantly, kissing Tim on the cheek. "Let me show you to your room."

"No, let me. I want to show him the Ouija space we cleared for him in the pantry," Dean offered.

"Was this one long, slow plot to get your mitts on my brother?" he demanded in a low voice when they were alone. "All along, 'Sam is the best thing in my life,' all the phone calls and funny little texts and 'oh, poor Tim, he has it so rough...'"

"Not everybody has their match made in Heaven," Tim said mildly. "You and Cas did some drastic things so the people you were inside could be together. I figured Sam was not a candidate for a gay transplant like your guy."

Dean grimaced at this reference to how much effort it had taken for him and Cas to really be together.

"So I made the sacrifice. It's not permanent, compared to what I was planning. And our secret is safe," Sam reassured his host. "I was so gradual about the change that your brother doesn't suspect how I really did it. Most of the time while he's on the road I'm only transforming my voice and I get to be my real self physically. It works for us."

"I hope Sam doesn't suspect, because this thing can sense us, hell, it's almost us, which is making things really complicated for hunting. Maybe you can hop on your board because I don't know what we're going to do about it."

"Actually, it's kind of messing me up too. As far as the great beyond can tell, there's been eau de shifter hanging around the DC area for months from you guys."

Any scuttlebutt Tim had been able to glean from the ether was tainted by the fact that all the ghosts, spirits and whatever else was on Tim's astral friend's list had a hard time untangling which person with this very unusual aura was running around killing people. Though when they were driving into town the Ouija board did tell them about the most recent murder, even before it hit the news.

"Crap, what're we going to do?" Dean asked about any of their several complications.

"For starters, you can push those two beds together," Sam said from the doorway. Dean dumbly aligned the two twin beds they'd bought for their guests and set up in the room that was their porn studio. "Everyone all caught up?" The younger Winchester moved to put his arm around the model-perfect woman just a couple inches shorter than him.

"I hope not," Dean thought as he and Cas went to their bedroom for a quick confab.

"It's nothing different than we've done together," Castiel reassured him.

"But we knew! We knew it was an illusion and we know what we are now," Dean said in a controlled voice. "I think Tim's had a game going all along, trying to figure out how to get with my brother. I've always felt like he was a wild card."

Cas shrugged.

"So! Sam hates being lied to. He's been banging a shifter—hunters don't take kindly to that. And someone who's really a dude, don't forget how that's going to go over. No matter what we've gotten up to together, baby, I've known it was you. We've always been upfront about everything."

"That's why we give them this time to see whether, with compatible sexual orientations, they care enough about each other to be able to face the truth," Cas stroked his back. "I suspect that Tim knows exactly how your brother is likely to react, and he, she, simply has nothing to lose from trying.

"I didn't tell you this when you were at the Institute, but Tim 's brain scans indicated a severe level of depression, so much so that I had to convince the other researchers that he would still be a useful candidate for the graft." He nibbled on Dean's ear. "What really think is that you are worried about what Sam may say about what you are hiding from him. So many wonderful things…"

The knock came at the door. "Save it till after the wedding," Sam joked. "Look, can we have a quick planning session so Tim knows what psychic doors to start banging on? He's not had a lot to go on, but maybe we can head over to this latest crime scene while it's still fresh."

They headed back into the living room, where Sam resumed, "All right, the bar where these two people were nabbed from is right near this woman's shop. It's like the shifter is working up to her. You guys've talked with this Kitty, maybe one of you should go back and see if you can convince her to relocate for a couple days."

Dean laughed. "She kind of, got a little weirded out by us hanging around so much. Maybe a fresh face would be more convincing." He sent a look to his brother as if to say, 'Cas tipped our hand again,' as the former angel had done many times before with an ill-timed comment. When actually, it was nothing of the sort. Kitty had seen both of them in all kinds of faces, but none of them had been Dean and Cas.

"No, Dean and I are going to search for its lair," Cas piped up. "An idea has just occurred to me. His manner became more formal. "You understand, Sam, I can't tell you about my work—"

"You wouldn't understand it anyway," Dean chimed in.

"But something about the location reminds me of a fact that I've come across in any well-organized ruling authority—there are always escape routes, should there be a coup d'etat."

"Right!" Sam grasped the idea. "Everyone knows there's secret ways to get the president out in case of a nuclear attack."

"You think he's found these tunnels and that's why nobody's found a lair in a sewer," Tim added. "Someone with those powers getting into the top-secret tunnel system is a pretty scary thought, but they'd have alarms or something wouldn't they?"

"The modern ones, of course. But don't you remember? Several of the main buildings were burned by the British in 1814." Cas blinked at the incomprehension in the room.

Dean pulled his boyfriend's arm around him while everyone laughed at this very typical Cas-ism. Castiel simply couldn't understand how little Americans knew about their own history. "We weren't alive then, remember," he replied fondly. "All right, so there's tunnels nobody knows about, but that may be the hardest way to find the guy." Dean didn't like calling it an 'it.' He paused. "You know where they are?"

"With some meditation I should be able to locate that memory." Castiel stood up. "That's what I use the pantry for, Tim, but as soon as I finish it's the perfect place for your channeling activities." The door shut and soon strange noises were coming from that direction.

"It's like what Tim does, except Cas is Oujiaing himself, sort of," Dean explained to Sam's raised eyebrows. "My problem is, the shifter has got to be employed somewhere nearby but I can't find the face he's using before he turns into the young guy who delivers the coffee to this shop owner."

"Who is, wow!" Sam exclaimed, looking at the picture of a beautiful Betty Page lookalike from the surveillance camera. He got a glare from both Tim and Dean.

"This Kitty is a real nice girl and what we're basically doing now is dangling her like bait. Already two gay clubs and two straight clubs have had disappearances and there's one person in jail who shouldn't be there."

Castiel re-emerged from the closet with his tape recorder. "This double murder that just happened was very unsavory, as double murders go. The couple was torn apart." He slid in next to Dean. "If this is the one you encountered in St. Louis, something must have happened to make him break pattern. Usually, he attacks one part of the couple, often a woman, and then leaves the man to take the legal consequences."

There was a knock at the door and Dean let in the other two hunters. "Hey, Zip, you're holding up well, thanks for inviting me in on this," Sam said, clapping the guy on the back affectionately. "Evan, good to see you, this is—"

Evan was already transfixed by the sitting Tim, and when all 6' 2" of the model-perfect woman stood up, hand outstretched, the young man stumbled over a couch leg in his rush to shake it.

Zip was nobody's fool, and he'd zoned in on the one tiny non-feminine part of that gorgeous body in about 3 seconds. His eyes transmitted to the Winchesters: "I know, I don't care, but let's just wait and see how long it takes Evan to figure it out." They all smirked.

"Nice to meet you, Evan. You can call me Tim. My parents cruelly saddled me with the name Temperance but even they don't call me that anymore," the sweet voice laughed.

"Okay." Evan then realized that the infamous Castiel was also trying to shake his hand, something Evan was much less eager to do.

"This is Cas, and he doesn't bite," Dean started saying.

"Rather, only Dean, and only when he asks me to," Cas corrected while shaking the guy's hand.

Evan sunk down on the couch to general laughter. Beers were handed all around.

"Did you get anything while you were under?" Dean asked. "Cas here was just accessing the memory of where some secret tunnels might be under Capitol Hill. He thinks that could be the reason why we can't find a lair in the public sewer system."

"Technically there were no angels on earth detail in North America in the early- to mid-1800s, but with my old vision it was very easy to see irregularities in the ground to a certain depth whenever I was in the vicinity of the capital."

"Wait, you people weren't interested in the outcome of the Civil War?" Zip wanted to know.

Cas took on a cagey look. "The directive was that it was one of those situations where we were forbidden to interfere, but as you know a few of those battles had some remarkable turnarounds. And you may have heard about Lincoln's vivid dreams."

Zip made an impressed noise and then stopped. "I'm not sure I want to go popping in and out of tunnels near the White House. I've got priors like you wouldn't believe—"

"I know, you've been in the system a bunch of times in the last few years, and then there's that thing that went down in Ohio that the cops don't know about yet," Tim said, smiling sweetly all the while. "I know things. I try to do due diligence before Sam brings hunters my way in case the information comes in handy."

"Quit showing off!" Dean said to fill the awkward silence. Tim had just broken the two cardinal rules with hunters: never threaten to turn them into the law, and never try to flex any supernatural mojo on them.

"What she means," Sam said, putting his arm around Tim, "Is that it pays for her to come on strong when she's dealing with what's essentially a boy's club. Hunters who think she's just another pretty face would be wrong."

"Where were we then?" Zip said as if he wanted to say something else. "The tunnels. I don't want that job, and Evan here, his daddy would be pissed if I took his son on a one-way trip to Homeland Security." Zip had taken the younger man under his wing after his father died in a hunt gone bad.

"It's not as bad as—" Cas said before being elbowed into silence. "That's all right. I'm not worried about being caught."

"As far as the rest of us is concerned, Evan and I found out something interesting today," the older man continued. He slid a picture from surveillance footage across the coffee table. Dean nearly choked. It was him as the busty Asian beauty, leaving the fetish shop to get some dinner with Kitty as he cultivated that friendship for surveillance purposes.

"I know, smoking hot, right?" was Evan's summation. Dean felt dirty. "We came on like the law and asked this Miss Kitty if anyone new had started hanging around her. She said she was making friends with this Chinese chick, right after all the murders started. I say the thing is stalking her with two bodies."

"That's kind of what the Monster-Mash shifter did in Pennsylvania," Sam said thoughtfully before Dean cut him off.

"First of all, she's Japanese. Her name's Mikiko something, she's here trying to establish residency for school." He filled in the back-story he'd created for himself and wished it were one of his better fleshed-out alternate male selves that was coming under scrutiny.

"Yes, I checked. It's harder to say during the day, but she didn't do the eye thing. And when I asked Kitty about her, she said this chick never stopped talking about her boyfriend or husband or something. That kind of doesn't fit the pattern." Cas' leg pressed against his. "But maybe we're dealing with someone who knows we're on to him. He could be branching out to keep us confused."

"Can we borrow that camera of yours?" Zip spoke up. "I like your idea of having that extra eye looking into the crowds. We may not see it until later, but these things are kind of creatures of habit. They pick a face they like, they come back to it for awhile. You must've had something that one in St. Louis liked, because it liked you enough to keep using your face for a little while and never hunted you down for leaving it buried alive."

Missing that kill shot, and then not realizing he'd been just shy of the shifter's heart had been one of Dean's biggest regrets in life, and he had a few. Sam shot him a sympathetic look.

"So anyway, guys, we need to get back to watching Kitty. Maybe Zip can take the first watch, and Evan and I will take the camera and start hitting all the night spots seeing if there's a pattern of someone watching or picking people up, even if it's not the same person. Dean, you'll take some of the places you know?"

"Sorry, Sammy, it's going to be a self-tour of DC's gay hot spots. I'm going with Cas."

"What?" "With your record?" Both Sam and Zip squawked.

"I can look after Dean quite well," Cas said, putting his arm around Dean for the first time since the two newcomers arrived. Dean beamed at their reaction to his first PDA with his boyfriend.

The group broke up, everyone pausing to grab sandwiches. Dean participated in the ritual of counting silver ammunition, or seemed to, as the bullets were now so hot they made his skin smoke a little, as would happen if he were sliced by the silver knife he now handled very carefully.

"Call me if you get anything good off the airwaves," Sam said and kissed Tim goodbye.

Dean saw the expression in the woman's eyes for what it was: the look when you finally have something you've wanted for a very long time.

Cas' face was serious when they were taking the metro to the capitol district to find the first spot that had looked different to his infrared angel vision. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked Dean. "I'm fine by myself. This job is already very stressful for you, I know."

The hunter inserted a different sim card in his phone while they were talking and handed the old one to Cas. "I know you'll be fine by yourself. My brother wonders why he can't reach me, we're underground together," he said. "They're already suspicious of this Mikiko girl, let them keep tracking her."

"But she's not the culprit and would be in danger from their weapons!" Cas exclaimed. He took in the unisex hoodie and pants Dean had chosen. "You're going to lead them in the wrong direction? Why?"

"Because I've been thinking about it and the only thing we have to go on is that he noticed me. He knows I noticed him. Maybe it wasn't a big deal the first time, but I've hung out with her twice since then. He must think I'm after his target. Maybe there's a code of ethics here and he thinks I let down the gang by going after the same girl. I'd rather have him chasing me than Kitty."

"She does seem to be a nice young woman, but you appear to be especially fond of her."

How to explain that Dean had gotten some very useful wardrobe and bedtime advice from his worldly new friend? He couldn't explain the special drive to keep her safe. "It's nice to have someone to talk to. We've made it a point to get friendly with a few bartenders and regulars at a couple places we like, but other than that, we've kept to ourselves."

They got off the train and Cas walked them around as if honing in on something. "I think it runs through here," he gestured, pointing across the grassy area to the Washington Monument. "This structure is under construction, is it not? A perfect place to hide in."

"Come to think of it, Cas, I'm not letting you be seen busting into the freaking Washington—" Dean began. "Do you feel that?" He was tingling from head to toe.

"Yes, now I understand what you mean. It's almost a crawling sensation," Castiel said of his first close proximity to the shifter. "If we feel it, it feels us. We must get a good look now. If it runs away and we run after it all of this law enforcement will get very suspicious."

Dean glanced at the test strip on his wrist. It was a bright purple. He'd only seen it get to pink before, on what he thought was a close call. "It must be right near us. Here, let me take your picture."

They played at being tourists while scanning the crowd for the telltale silver eyes. "This makes no sense. I feel like I'm boiling alive," Dean said and then one of the cops stationed in the area put down his binoculars.

Silver.

Dean grabbed Cas for a quick kiss and then murmured in his ear. "It's the cop with the binoculars." There were actually several, and Cas looked around confused. "Big guy, African-American, about forty? Here, pretend to talk on the phone."

They continued talking with their phones to their ears. "I feel very uncomfortable, Dean, but it's odd that he's able to keep still. I have a strong urge to scratch myself or perhaps immerse my head in water. But that man is talking to his peers as if nothing is wrong."

It was true. The guy looked like he was talking about their next donut stop to the uniform next to him.

"Well, it's him and I know he felt me before. Maybe he has more practice at hiding these things. We didn't get the freak instruction manual. Whatever. I'm going to go be a mutant right in front of a bunch of hunters if you're okay here. Wish me luck."

Dean swallowed his disgust and used one of the portable toilets set up in the high-traffic tourist area, thinking it was better than going into a men's room and coming out a lady or vice versa. He emerged with his clothes filled out differently and began walking towards the metro to reach the neighborhood where the hunters had Kitty staked out.

Castiel finished the hot dog he'd bought from a vendor so he had time to be sure about the reaction he observed. The cop had suddenly begun to look uncomfortable, and then he saw the man say something to his coworkers and head off. In the same direction Dean had just taken.

He was in no hurry to follow the shifter. In fact, Cas wanted to preserve his anonymity if he could. Because he was quite sure now that when he was in his normal, unaltered state, the shifter couldn't feel him at all. Or Dean, who altered his body only minimally.

When Dean had shifted some distance away it had registered like a shot, however.

"Mikiko!" Kitty greeted her new friend by kissing her on both cheeks. "Do you know the cops have been in here again asking me all kinds of questions about the murders that have been happening in the neighborhood? They wouldn't say anything specific, but maybe there's a fetish angle. You don't think they suspect me, do you?"

The Japanese girl gazed around the shop deadpan. "I can't imagine why they might think you're dangerous."

They laughed a bad girl laugh.

"Come out with me tonight," Dean urged. "My fiancé has some project at work and I need to let my hair down. We're in wedding countdown mode at this point—my relatives have already arrived."

"We could get dressed up in some sexy outfits and any men you reel in you can throw my way," Kitty suggested. "Some of my costumes are for rent. Let's see what might fit you."

The two women emerged dressed in provocative clothing, Dean feeling more idiotic than he ever had carrying a small purse for the first time. He borrowed the small leather backpack because he would need his clothes at some point unless he wanted to show up as Dean in a leather bustier and miniskirt in front of Sam.

He was able to give in to Kitty's "bachelorette party" plans, which meshed nicely with the list of bars and clubs the hunters were going to hit that night. They laughed over the attention their outfits were getting, the two of them taking shots with their arms draped around each other to heighten the titillation from their admirers.

"It's like, I kind of wish we'd just gotten married without anybody coming to make a big deal out of it," Dean confessed. "We both know how we feel, and this is just to make me legal so I can finish school," he told her the cover story once again. "Someday we would have a real ceremony, but this is kind of too rushed to be shared."

"You seem so in love," Kitty said. "And your fiancé doesn't feel threatened by your being a strong woman?"

"Not at all." They giggled. In fact, the only time Dean was at all dominant with Castiel was when he was wearing a girl. The results were explosive.

"You're so lucky. I wish I could find a guy like that. Take that one over there, do you think I should go for it?" Kitty was pointing to what seemed an altogether normal man who was drooling over the two women, much like many had at the last bar.

"No, come with me, I have a good feeling about the next place on our list." Mikiko pulled a tipsy Kitty along.

"Miki, this is a gay bar! Nobody's going to want me like that here, although I see a few customers—oops, you know I can't tell who."

Dean was gratified to pick Sam and a very uncomfortable Evan out of the crowd pretty quickly. He'd estimated they'd probably run through their other locations and were forcing themselves to tackle the non-straight venues, while Zip was casing Kitty's apartment nearby.

It was probably the wrongest sensation of his life, having his brother's hunter-eyes trained upon him, as a potential prey, when all the while Dean was wearing some things that sat very naturally upon his upper half while his lower half felt suddenly horribly naked.

"Like that guy," Mikiko said, pointing right at Sam, who flinched. "He doesn't seem gay. I think he likes you because he's been looking over here an awful lot. Bartender, send something manly over to that table," Dean said before his companion could stop it.

In short order the women were invited to have a drink at the hunters' table. "Hey, aren't you that cop I met the other day?" Kitty peered drunkenly at Evan. "There's been so many I can't keep track."

"Yeah, uh, I'm undercover, keeping an eye on things," the hunter said in his best cop tone. A gaggle of raucous drag queens breezed by and he averted his eyes.

His brother was annoyed that they'd have to play this as cops, Dean could tell. "And who are you?" Dean asked in that high voice.

"I'm also undercover," Sam slid out part of a badge, "We're concerned about the attacks that have been going on in the neighborhood. Have you noticed anyone suspicious—what's your name, anyway?"

Dean felt a wave of revulsion as his brother flirted with him with slightly more than professional interest for the next few minutes, asking how well she knew the area, etc. He'd stayed carefully sober just for an eventuality like this, and Dean did his best to make it known that Kitty was the one who was available and very, very interesting.

Both Evan and Sam were safely listening to a story about some dominatrix certificate she'd obtained, and Dean took a moment to swallow a shot as a reward for getting out of that revolting limelight. Except he felt no relief.

The waves of discomfort were still rolling over his skin. He looked down to the test strip affixed to his knee. Bright purple. Forcing himself to stay calm, Dean tried to sense which direction it was coming from. He felt it move towards the restrooms and got up to follow it.

"I'm going to powder my nose, hon," he said to Kitty. "You can handle these boys by yourself."

Evan was completely mesmerized by the Miss Kitty, but Sam was a past master at keeping one eye on the job. Dean calculated he had very few minutes before his brother started making up a reason to come after him. He pushed ahead of the line to the unisex toilets, claiming a tiny girl bladder problem that was unfortunately very much the case, and he tried to think fast in the brief privacy.

A few minutes later Dean Winchester was striding across the crowded bar. The couple people here who knew him in that face nodded at him, and he nodded back.

"Hey guys, sorry to interrupt your good time, but you weren't answering and I wanted to tell you: I found the target, but we need to move quick." He smiled over at Miss Kitty. "Ma'am if ever there was a good excuse for officers lying down on the job." She smiled a tipsy, dazzled smile back. "Over there," he jerked his head towards the restrooms.

Sam and Evan nodded.

"Yeah, there was a line, I let it go in and scoped out a way to get it out without raising a fuss. The exit out back leads to all these alleys. My concern about taking care of this right now is that it might be keeping a couple of those people who've disappeared in its lair, like it tends to do. You guys follow me with her and we'll take care of this thing once and for all?" He leaned in. "We think there might be another one."

Miss Kitty was looking dazed and a wee bit nauseous. "Here," Sam poured some peanuts in a bar napkin. "Eat something while we're on the move. I want you to stick close with me until I'm sure we've got the right person. We weren't sure if there was more than perpetrator, and if so, if they were acting together. It's almost over, I promise."

Everything went down very fast, so much the better for not raising a fuss. Evan and Sam were already controlling the alley outside with a shaken Kitty in tow by the time Dean came out with Mikiko walking tall on her stiletto heels, notwithstanding the heat of the silver blade pressing into her lower back, right into the neat slice it had already made in her skin.

The light caught her eyes.

"Nasty piece of shit," Sam spat on the ground. "You show us where you've been holed up, and depending on if they're still alive I might kill you with this," he patted his gun, "instead of this," his knife peeked out of his sleeve.

"Where to?" Evan pushed Mikiko, who stumbled and then took a moment to right herself.

"We've only got a minute before somebody opens that door," Evan sliced her arm and watched her skin smoke.

"This way," she said in her high voice.


	11. Chapter 11

Castiel kicked out in frustration at another dead end in the underground maze. He'd followed his most detailed mental blueprint, which dated from the early 20th century, to another section blocked off by modern construction, capsized ceilings, or in some places, filled with water.

These might have been difficult but not insurmountable obstacles for his old self, he reflected, but it was yet another reminder that actually living life was never as simple as it used to appear from above.

That a world so fragile could present so many stumbling blocks, that the short reign of a civilization should always seek to last forever—these were mysteries. Castiel was collecting such mysteries during his time on earth, and the verse came to his mind:

"You have turned cities into ruins and destroyed their fortifications. The palaces which our enemies built are gone forever."

The tunnels constructed during a different historical tableau remained, and the layout was clear in his mind. Retracing his steps, it didn't take too long to return to the sewer walkway he'd located as an entryway into the old labyrinth built to hide the Americans from the English. The surfaces bore marks from the pickaxes that had hewn into the rock, along with evidence of some primitive explosives where the timber supports had rotted away.

The one way in which his current senses surpassed his angelic capabilities was in determining was where the shifter might have been living.

There were many things about his new life that Castiel did appreciate, and this mutation he'd gladly taken on for his lover had its advantages. For he was sure that the entity had been through here. Either the creature had been in the underground bunker for some time or it had been going in and out very frequently, because he felt echoes of that tingling feeling bouncing between his skin and the stone. In places it was overwhelming, even worse than when they'd actually been very close to the shapeshifter on the ground above.

Of course. His movements stopped while he noted how differently he thought these days, his human brain working from pieces rather than wholes as it did now. Cas finally understood the pieces of the puzzle that had been quietly assembling themselves and waiting for him to notice them for what they meant.

The former angel changed tack and began following fluctuations in that prickly feeling—instead of blindly following the next instance of discomfort, thinking that would be the place where the creature had made its home. He ran down one tunnel as far as he could go, checked his test strip with his flashlight, and then pursued another.

The strip was consistently a deep red in a certain direction. Red being much hotter than the pink or purple they'd been tracking. No wonder he'd felt almost ill in some areas.

Castiel uttered an oath and navigated to a sewer tunnel with a grate where his phone got reception. His first call was to Tim but it went straight to voicemail. He cursed again. He couldn't call Dean, who was undercover—Cas smiled to himself at how much enjoyment he and his love had gotten out of that disguise. The former angel estimated that Zip would be the best one for the task and gave a hymn of praise that they had all exchanged numbers.

"Zip? Yes, this is Castiel. I have an urgent message to relay to Tim. Yes I did try the telephone and there was no answer, but if I'm right there is a lot to listen to in the subtle realms at this time," he said impatiently.

"No, I can't send Dean. He's patrolling a different part of the tunnel. We need more information because this is a lot bigger than we suspected. And once you go back to the apartment, stay there. I don't have time to explain why, but I have reason to believe Tim might be in danger."

"All right, I won't let him out of my sight," Zip agreed. "You find anything yet?"

"No," Cas said tersely and hung up.

As a last piece of insurance, he dropped Dean's sim card right there in case one of those geographic coordinate searches could be run on it. Then he ran back the way he came, having finally accepted that the only way to find any survivors in time was to expose himself. "Hello! Is anyone in there?" he called, over and over, forcing himself to wait for the echo to die down to listen for an answer.

Finally, the faintest of sounds made its way over the dripping of water and the far-off noise of traffic filtered through the entrance he'd come in through. By going in various directions and calling out, the human voices eventually led him to a wide chamber with niches that he assumed were intended for weapons of some kind. It reminded him of a similar space underneath Rome, down to the hooks in the walls for securing prisoners or perhaps livestock. Except back in Rome, they wouldn't have used handcuffs.

"So?" one of the two bound men prompted Cas standing in the doorway. "Are you one of them? He," he nodded at the other man, "said you would be, but I thought, why not bank on you being the law, what the hell? You do know we're dealing with aliens who can steal your face right? One of them is probably living my life right now, banging my girlfriend."

The man's hysteria appeared to have run its course for the moment, and then the ragged voice asked, "Could I have some of that water?"

Castiel helped the man drink from a bottle while the second, more suspicious man was speaking. "There's no way to know whether he is one of them or not. You're not a cop. He doesn't look like a cop."

"There actually is a good way to tell if someone is a shapeshifter besides the, er, effluvium," Cas gestured to a pile of it that had been left in the corner. "The eyes. You must have seen them catch silver in the light," and he demonstrated with his small flashlight, the contacts hiding any reaction. But his next words were true, "You have nothing to fear from me, Darryl, nor you, Brian."

"How did you know my name?" the two men asked together, more nervous than ever.

"I've seen each of you in bars around Dupont Circle—I believe my fiancé and I spoke to both of you on several occasions, but you don't know me." The encounters has happened when the couple was using one of their other gay identities—the product of his lover's cautiousness, Cas was thinking fondly.

"Well, does she know you're wandering around the sewer playing superhero and saving people? And if that's really what you're going to do, can we get at it already? Because they're going to come back," Darryl griped.

Cas froze. The guttural syllables were out of his mouth before he could prevent it.

"What's the matter? Do you hear something?" Brian wanted to know.

"What language was that?" Darryl asked.

"My apologies, I never have picked up the habit of swearing in a human language. I missed something rather important. Come on."

The men exchanged worried glances as Castiel quickly picked the handcuffs, pushing away the memories of Dean testing him on this essential skill while blindfolded.

The new human had never needed orienteering help, however. He'd flown around the globe so many times that Castiel, like any angel, had an excellent sense of direction. Though he'd made many false turns in the maze on his way in, the rescuer led the two men to a nearby exit with sure steps.

Along the way, he tried to elicit information about how many shifters there were. The men understandably had a hard time discerning this for sure, but they believed there were at least three and none of the faces they'd been using meant anything to him.

By this time it was dark, so after a quick peek to see that no one was in this back alley, he helped the two men to relative safety aboveground.

While they tried to thank him Castiel as dialing his phone. "Yes, you're welcome. I recommend that you leave town without speaking to anyone. This city is not a safe place for you to be, and if one of them has been wearing your form you could be wanted for a crime." He handed them each a hundred dollars and the two filthy men dashed off.

Castiel was trying to decide on the message he wanted to leave for Dean, a mixture of his desire, his deep emotion and the information that he'd begun to discern far too many flavors of shifter down in the tunnels for this to be about a simple loner trying to steal a beautiful partner for himself.

Then he felt it. Two of the flavors he'd begun to discern down below meant two entities at least. Hurriedly, he hung up and texted Sam first, the person in the best position to do something about his misstep earlier.

He should have noticed immediately that this person Zip, who met Tim as very much a woman, had called her "him," as everyone who had met him as a man still did. Everything Castiel knew of human conditioning told him that although this man knew Tim to not have been born a woman, people continue using the first gender they classify someone as.

It was one of the imprisoned men assuming he had a "fiancée," rather than a "fiancé," that made him realize he'd not been talking to the real gentleman with the curious name of Zip at all. Merely someone who assumed that the name "Tim" naturally belonged to a man.

His skin was about to crawl off his body but Cas risked one more message to Dean's second phone number.

"Hello. Would it be possible to make our interests clear before you resort to violence?" he asked politely, allowing himself to be pulled back down into the tunnels, searched and stripped of his weapons and phone.

The blows hurt, but few things on earth were as daunting as crossing swords with one of his brothers, so he still considered physical pain to be interesting. The verse came to mind: "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful." How deeply they had proved this axiom together in their lovemaking!

Castiel chose to concentrate instead on Dean, mentally singing a psalm of praise about the man whose presence had imbued his very soul. His very theoretical soul.

Cas had made inquiries on that crucial topic of whether or not he had a soul-or merely a simulacrum of one copied upon incarnating, which would be more logical, given that no angel had ever been known to create a soul. He was unsurprised that no one in Heaven was willing to entertain the question that ached at him during quiet moments. If Castiel did indeed possess a soul it would fetch a pretty penny to whosoever reaped it and then won it, and no one was about to let the former angel know he held such a bargaining chip.

"For He bruises, but He binds up; He wounds, but His hands make whole," so the verse said.

This was what Castiel considered as a series of punishing blows rained upon his midsection. He almost wished he were more invested in this beating. When he was with Dean, Cas felt as though all of his affection must be radiating from one soul towards its mate, but when he was alone, it was as though he went dark. It must mean that it was all Dean's soul powering their relationship, and the former angel was merely aping his partner in this as in so many other ways that were never quite convincingly human.

Castiel thought himself a likely candidate for Purgatory and thus cherished every moment of this short—but shared!—life. Secretly, he imagined himself and Dean earning one of the coveted double berths in Heaven.

These mental tricks were good enough to keep all but the most involuntary exclamations as he was pummeled, when suddenly the two shifters stopped.

"He's not one. One of us would've shifted to heal the wounds," the younger man said.

"Give 'em a minute. We touched him. With him all seeing stars like this, he won't be able to stop himself from dropping that skin and turning into one of us," the older one counseled.

They dragged him bodily towards the large gallery. Man number one said, "He's a hunter. That's why he let those patsies go. There's so many of us in town your nose is confused."

"Well, I smelled someone earlier and it wasn't anyone I knew. Anything I ever knew."

The younger man disagreed. "Don't you see? He kinda matches the description that Wally gave us. Hunter: shoot on sight."

"That crackpot Wally is the whole reason we're—" man number two began before he was kicked by man number one with a glance in the bruised and bleeding Cas' direction.

"Excuse me," Castiel said politely. "Pardon me for the interruption, but you register another's presence with your sense of smell?"

"Yeah, so, I'm not going to lead you to one of ours," the first man replied.

"I wouldn't ask you to," Castiel said. "I'm merely interested in your life form."

"Why?" the second man's eyes narrowed. "What's it to you?"

"I'm a scientist," Castiel said.

He was utterly unprepared for the barrage of savage blows that word brought upon him. They beat him unconscious.

Dean got a text from Cas while he was walking into the bar bathroom. As often happened when Cas tried to text, something that made sense to the former angel did not immediately reveal its meaning to Dean. While "Come for Naugahyde" could eventually be decoded into "Meet me for dinner at the 50's-style diner where you taught me the name of the substance the booths are made of," this message was too important for Dean to spend precious minutes decoding it.

"They don't know us," the message said unhelpfully over and over in his head. Dean could feel the shifter hanging around somewhere outside the unisex bathroom. He'd slipped his silver knife and gun into his miniskirt with the cardigan borrowed from Kitty tied over it, and that's how he was going to have to meet his quarry. It wasn't going to be pretty, but the thing could only get so close before they knew each other for what they were and the fur started flying.

He came out of the bathroom and the worst sensation wasn't his flesh crawling. It was the voice in his ear.

He froze. Dean Winchester froze before the first punch.

"I don't know what you are, freak, but this knife is going straight into your spinal cord if you so much as peep," Dean's voice said to himself. The real Dean turned his head and looked into his own eyes, gloating at him.

"You-you're not-" the feminine voice he was using stuttered out.

"Well, you're not exactly normal either," the pseudo-Dean pushed them towards a janitor closet and shut the door behind them. "I haven't been able to figure out how you do it. One minute I'm on your trail, the next second you're gone. And you smell too different to be one of us."

Mikiko's nose was wrinkling up at a very unpleasant smell. The shifter caught her eyeballing the puddle of shed skin. "Oh, that. I had to get rid of the club kid I wore in here pretty quick. Surprised you didn't shed in the bathroom."

The real Dean's mind was whirring. Cas said "they," meaning there's a bunch of shifters around. No wonder Tim couldn't get a fix on the situation. He thought about the scene near the Washington Monument. The shifter had been looking in the distance for something but he didn't know what. Cas must mean that they only gave themselves away when they shifted.

Hoping that his boyfriend hadn't paid some kind of price for that insight, the hunter's brain kept right on thinking despite the weirdness of the moment, just as it was trained to do. The single advantage it isolated for him was that this shifter had no idea he was talking to the real Dean.

"And your eyes," the creature was saying as he surveyed the smoke caused by the blade pressing into Mikiko's skin. "The first time I saw you they reflected the light like ours do" (Dean had gone out that one time without contacts until he bought dark lenses to match his Japanese persona, hoping that no one would notice). "Take 'em out," he ordered. Dean did nothing until the knife sliced into his back. "Hand them to me nice and slow."

"I haven't seen your eyes react in here," Dean remarked as he removed the contacts.

"Most hunters are too dumb to catch me, but I bought some contacts special for tonight. We're about to get real up close and personal with some that really don't like my kind so they won't like you either."

Advantage number two—the green lenses this shifter was wearing weren't exactly Dean's natural color. Sam could very well notice that—hopefully not right away.

"And I'm supposed to keep your little secret for why exactly?" Dean asked, having no intention of tipping his hand anytime soon, or especially in front of his brother.

"Because you're having an affair with the guy who's doing Dean Winchester. That is, me," the shifter laughed, "I followed you back to the apartment. I know where they live. You could've knocked me over when I traced you back there to watch you and this average-looking guy all over each other through the window, the same one I saw with Dean."

Dean nearly gagged at the idea of Cas and him in any form being observed by anyone, especially this creep.

"All I know about this Cas is he has something that makes the guys and the gals real happy, and he knows how to use it. I've observed Dean Winchester more than he's ever known, and he never looked so radiant as when I saw him out with this guy. I knew I was right about him," the shifter asserted.

"You're going to try to crash that couple? Take it from someone who knows better than to try. I'm just a side thing because the boyfriend still likes girls every once in a while," Mikiko protested, trying to jockey into position to use her knife.

"Oh no," his borrowed face pressed against his assumed one, pulling his body close so that it seemed like they were making out. The wrongness made the real hunter want to hurl. "I'll take those, sweetie. You take these." The false Dean cuffed the real one with her hands over her head across a pipe.

"And I'm not going to scream or shift my way out of here because?" Dean inquired.

"Because it's only a matter of time before I've picked up something that belongs to this horse-hung lover of yours so that I can take his place. Then I either kill him quick or I make him suffer. your choice. C'mon, catch up sweetie. It's all DNA, whatever I am and whatever you are."

Dean's regular cocky grin smiled back at the Mikiko who was seriously considering heat-butting it. "Wait, unless you have a key? No matter what I tried I couldn't break in."

Dean had really only gone in and out of the apartment (liberally covered with Enochian protection symbols) as Mikiko a few times, and that had usually been with Cas, so he chose to say, "No, this is not like a ménage situation—Dean's all about the cock these days," and smiled at the truth behind that statement.

Then he followed with, "You actually think the real Dean won't notice he's screwing something else?" Dean scoffed.

It was a horrible thought, someone masquerading as him, trying to take over this love affair he'd worked so hard for. He pushed the idea from his mind—Cas wouldn't just marry someone else who happened to look like him.

Then something finally made sense to him. The shifter from St. Louis had stopped running around with his face at some point because he must've lost whatever piece of clothing had Dean's DNA on it. These days, the house-boyfriend Dean spent a lot of his time in the gym working out, so it would have been easy to get a towel or some of his workout gear. Cas did nothing but hole himself up in the high-security lab and come home to service his fiancé, so it must be a lot harder to find something DNA-dense enough for the shifter to work from. Why had this thing fixated on him so much? he wondered as he had many times before.

As if reading his mind, the imposter said, "Too bad you won't get a chance to try him out, 'cause that Dean Winchester is something special, all right. At first I thought I wanted to be him, but now I think having all that passion all for myself will be so much better. He had so much more potential than he even knew, but I saw it. A regular wildcat in bed, must be. That's one guy that knows how to love. Years ago I thought, who can blame him for banging as many chicks as he could score with this body, but underneath it all he knows the value of loyalty. I've never had anyone like that."

Mikiko was taken aback for a moment. "You mean you weren't after Kitty?"

A slow, sensual grin spread across his misappropriated face and Dean began to truly hate himself.

"I would've taken her for a spin, sure. The whole reason I'm in this city is Dean, but there are a lot of people you can meet wearing the body of a bisexual homeless kid working off the books for local businesses, which usually means kinda sorta doing sexual favors for money. I've had a place to crash almost every night since I've been in DC. And that Miss Kitty is lonely. I would've gotten a lay and some cash sooner or later."

Dean bit his lipsticked lip and then hoped he didn't get any on his teeth. How could he have not considered the most likely explanation for the whole coffee delivery scenario? The long-haired boy didn't actually work for any of the employers he questioned, and they wouldn't have wanted to themselves or the vagrant in trouble with the cops for an off-the-books arrangement.

"So? Are we on the same page?" the shapeshifter demanded with the body Dean wanted to wrest back from him. "I haven't finished downloading all of Dean's memories from the last 8 or 9 years since I was him last, but I can't wait to get to the part where he's so well-fucked that he doesn't notice he's sharing his boyfriend with a shifter. It's kind of fun to be all 'ride in and save the day' like this. I pretended to be a hunter a few times after I met him," the thing said, wielding his gun like in a good impression of Dean's impress-the-ladies routine. He hated himself even more.

"But that Sam is a horse of a different color, and he'll kill you as soon as look at you, sweetheart. Me, I can be reasonable. If you cooperate for the next little bit I'll see if I can let you go before his brother wastes you, so whichever way you look at it, I'm your night in shining armor, baby."

The sight of his own hand caressing an ass that was currently connected to Dean was so many kinds of wrong he swallowed bile.

But despite himself, Dean felt himself exchanging a kind of sympathy with the person who'd stolen his body. No matter which of them was wearing the Dean Winchester mask, they were both the hunted.

Dean stood there and nodded, all the calculations in his mind gone silent.

"Let's knock 'em dead, baby. Fucking with hunters' heads is always fun."

It only took a few moments and Dean was let free, pushed ahead of his false self to join his brother.

"My lair is over in the capitol district," Mikiko pointed from where she'd been herded out the back entrance along with her brother and Evan.

"Really?" "Really?" Sam and the false Dean said together.

"Looks like Cas was right," the younger brother said. "All right, Ev, why don't you take your car and bring Kitty over to her place and sit tight?"

Evan looked very excited at that idea, while Miss Kitty looked more than a little nauseous. "What are you doing with my friend?" She quavered. "There's no way she's committed any of these murders."

"Looks can be deceiving," Dean said with just the right level of "dashing" underlying the serious tone to distract the girl. "Go on with this guy. He'll take care of you."

Dean watched the woman who was sort of his friend walk away, shooting a look of confusion over her shoulder. He shouldn't've had that friendship. He'd stolen those moments of girl bonding by virtue of his voluntary mutation. In nobody's book anywhere was that cool. Probably if this psycho-shifter knew what Dean had done to himself on purpose he would kill him for being that stupid. No one wants to move through the world going from face to face like a pariah.

Nobody except him and Cas, who had gotten so much mileage out of it. A tiny sob came out of his throat, mourning the end of their sensual idyll. His brother didn't pay any attention.

"You're coming with us," the fake Dean declared, and didn't yank his prey half so roughly as the real Dean would have.

Mikiko followed along meekly on her high heels, consoling herself that at least Sam was driving his own car and not the Impala, even while his brother had a tactical planning session with the shifter. Only now did Dean realize how much he missed hunting with his brother, really hunting and not half-assing it. He hadn't paid attention since Cas came to life, but now Dean felt a ferocious nostalgia for his brotherly bond.

Every once in a while the brothers barked a question to her handcuffed in the backseat with a gun pointed at her face. She felt a million times worse than the few times she'd ridden in the back of a cop car, and Mikiko answered very quietly, leading them close to the Washington Monument.

At that point, Dean's plan faltered. He wanted to see Cas with all of his being, and that had been why he led the group to where he knew his boyfriend was supposed to be. All he could do was find a likely-looking sewer grate and then concentrate on the whisper of warmth and safety he could detect underneath that creepy-crawly feeling, which was at red-alert level according to his skin-sensor.

"Cas! Cas! Are you all right?" Dean asked silently, and he felt, he knew that what made his cells sing would always be Cas, so his boyfriend had to be nearby.

He saw the false Dean looking at him incredulously for some reason, but Dean navigated the maze unerringly towards the place where he blindly sought his lover.

They were so very close to where that heavenly 'Cas' feeling was beckoning to its mate. Dean wasn't sure he would be able to keep himself from launching at his lover. Unless he was hurt? Dean was now feeling a definite 'hurt' vibe. A little more info on what they were walking into would be nice! How could they not have worked on this ESP stuff before now?

"Wally, so glad you could join us," a man said, holding a gun trained on the false Dean.

"And who doesn't know Sam Winchester?" a second man said with his gun on Sam.

Their eyes glinted a fierce silver in the glow of their flashlights.

"You bitch. You did have help all along," Sam swore, giving a confused glance at his brother who was just referred to by the wrong name, and a very irritated look to Mikiko. "Is this even where you've been hiding the bodies or you just decided to introduce me to the shifters' convention you've been holding in DC?"

"You know about that?" the first man said before he was silenced by a hiss from the second man.

"You'll find no bodies here," a woman stood up from the circle of people sitting surrounded by electric lanterns in the large open room. "Except Wally's, momentarily," she gestured to the thing wearing Dean's body. "I think we can all agree he's an outlier, a nutcase. Makes us look bad—makes you look bad because you let him go that one time and then a few times you don't know about," she smiled at Sam.

Then the woman took her own gun from her coat pocket and extended it, handle first, towards the younger brother. "Don't worry. Untraceable. We'd like you to do the honors—it plays better in our community if we don't break the rule about taking out one of our own, and you get the bragging rights in your world."

"Wh-What? Who's she then?" Sam was trying to catch up while Dean made a superhuman—supermutant-effort not to look at the immobile heap in a corner that was Cas.

"That's a very good question," the woman, who appeared to be the leader among the silver eyes, said, giving Mikiko a good once-over. "She's not one of us. Not really. We'd like a chance to keep her for observation," a dark look was exchanged among the shifters. "You know, see what makes her tick. I bet you've got a story to tell, don't you, honey?"

"Not really," Mikiko giggled. "I don't know who you people are, but I haven't killed anyone or done anything wrong. So you—" she turned to Sam, "Can't shoot me. You hunters have some kind of code don't you?"

"So you're saying that that guy, my brother, is really the shifter murdering people for kicks? I think I'd know the difference, freak, but nice try, wasn't it Dean?"

The two hunters shared a laugh and then Sam scanned the face before him. "The eyes."

"What? There's nothing wrong with my eyes. See?" Dean turned his flashlight on himself.

"Take them out, Wally. Contacts. Some of us wear them, most of us feel like we shouldn't hide who we are. I'm Sarah, by the way," the leader said. "We came here to make a resolution to take care of this problem," she nodded at Dean, "Because none of your kind could seem to manage it. The vote was a couple days ago. Glad you didn't show up here then and have a turkey shoot of our people. That's right, you pushed us to it, Wally."

Dean's cocksure attitude seemed to be slipping very slightly around the edges.

"Take 'em out, asshole," Sam elbowed the person next to him. "I knew there was something weird about you. Your eye color is one shade off from the one I've been looking at my whole life. Go on, shithead, or I'll rip them out myself."

The lenses were removed and Dean's classic devil-may-care grin was still in place while everyone's flashlight beam moved across his irises. "I could've made a better brother to you than the real Dean, Sam," he said.

Then the false Dean appealed to the shifter contingent. "And no way you're going to kill me. It's them that run us down like animals. Our society has to be better than theirs, you always say," he wheedled Sarah.

The leader was addressing herself exclusively to Sam. "Told you, Sam Winchester. Everything I've told you is the God's honest truth. There are more of us than you will ever know about, because most of us aren't followed by a body count. We stay amongst ourselves, if possible, so we don't have to deal with all the problems that come from your kind not getting the big picture as we see it. So, are you going to pull the trigger, or do you want me to do it?"

It was the only call. Dean would've killed this Wally who was trying to steal his life, if only someone had handed him a gun, and felt no remorse about blowing away his own face. Unfortunately, he was being held by a muscular shifter whose skin was making Dean's body seethe with its alien presence.

It still hurt to watch his brother raise a gun at someone who looked exactly like Dean and then pull the trigger like nothing.

"Well, that's that," Sarah said. "We'll dispose of the body, if you'll release that hot little piece to us."

"Not so fast—nobody's told me of any crimes she's committed," Sam said, grabbing Mikiko's other arm. Dean could've kissed his brother. "I see you've got one of ours over there," he pointed to Cas' shape. "Worked him over a little more than necessary, I'd say. Why don't we make a trade and I don't make you pay for having too good of a time on him?"

"What?" Dean squawked without being able to help himself. "I don't know these people! I haven't done anything wrong! You can't treat me like leverage and then walk away!"

Sam's conscience appeared to react very slightly to that argument. The hunter and Sarah argued for a while about the fate of this creature that didn't fit into either of their taxonomies.

But there were no more arguments to stop Dean from taking action.

The danger of a shifter stealing Cas away from him was now dead. The only thing now standing in Dean's way now was the fear of coming out to his brother, but there was nothing left to do. He began to reverse the shift, something that always took at least a couple minutes and was even harder when crossing the gender divide.

"Sam! It's me!" Dean interrupted the negotiations.

Sam gave a half-glance in his direction. "Please. You look less like my brother than the other guy did."

It was hard to tell where he was without a mirror, but Dean felt his contours continuing to morph for another minute before he was finally back to normal.

"See? It's me. Check out my tattoo. Did the other guy even have one? Neither of us checked."

The body that lay at their feet had curly reddish hair and was about 5'5", so it was safe to say that there would be no more useful information from it.

Sam surveyed the tattoo, which was almost completely visible on the male body barely covered by the bustier and miniskirt. "Nice look. A tattoo's like a scar, asshole. We've already seen they do scars."

"Wait! Sam! Ask me anything. The name of your security blanket was 'Mimi' and you kept it until you were 12. You didn't lose your virginity until you were about to go to college because you were like a midget up until then, but when you did it was with this thirtysomething MILF you met at a motel pool, what was her name—Margot?"

Sam was rolling his eyes. "Everyone here knows you things can like download a memory."

"And I know that you're dating a chick who wasn't always a chick," Dean finished. "You just told me a few hours ago, so how would I know that?"

His brother seemed uncomfortable with the curious reaction from the shifters. Dean guessed that Tim made such a convincing woman he'd not had to deal with any rudeness from the general public about dating a transsexual. "You ran into my brother at some point this evening, just like that guy did. Sorry lady, or sir, I don't know what you did or didn't do, but I leave it up to these people who know more than I do to sort you out."

"If anything happens to me, my girlfriend or our friend you beat into a pulp, I'll come hunt you down. You know I will," Sam said as Castiel was lifted up by two shifters.

"Of course," Sarah said politely. "And the same is true for any of my people unless you have evidence of a crime. Can we call this a non-aggression pact and be done with this whole ugly affair? I'll let you leave first, even."

Dean had already turned back into his Mikiko form in only a few seconds because it felt less wrong than to be himself done up a like an amateur drag queen in front of his brother. After seeing himself as the bizarre version presented by the shifter, and realizing all that smooth, vain posturing was pretty close to his (old) self, morphing back into a sexy girl was quick and comfortable.

Instead, he put all of his might into an attempt to contact Cas, who was being hauled over to his brother like a sack of potatoes. If Cas wakes up he can tell them, tell everyone who I am! Dean thought. Sam might be pissed, but he'd never leave his brother to this secret society's version of justice.

"I'll take him from here. Thanks for not killing him, I guess," Sam bent down to shoulder the smaller man's body.

Something in all the moving around must have brought Cas around a little. Dean saw the eyes open.

Castiel's eyes fixed on Dean's for one long moment before shutting again. Sam carried him away.

Mikiko stumbled a little and was righted by the shifter leader. "Don't worry, sweetheart, we want to get you to one of our doctors to see what's going on behind that pretty little face."

Mikiko wasn't listening. She allowed herself to be handcuffed to the wall and paid no attention to her captors for some minutes.

She was trying to understand why Cas would have seen her there, about to be left behind with these strange creatures that weren't like them at all, and say nothing.

She hunched against the cold stone awaiting the next disaster, sure of only one thing: that she would be facing it alone.


	12. Chapter 12

Castiel was dropped roughly on the hood of Sam's car and he feigned regaining consciousness. "What happened? Where's Dean?"

Sam panted for a moment before he answered. "Sorry man, you started to get real heavy two blocks ago. Let me get you in the car so we can get the hell out of here." Once they were both sitting in the front, Sam had regained his breath enough to say, "I haven't seen Dean. Thought you must've sent him back to your apartment on that red-alert message about Tim. What was that about anyway? I called him, and she was all like, 'Why did you drag me away from my board for this?' Zip did show up—he might've crashed there to give Even his shot at paradise with Miss Kitty."

As soon as the car was in motion Cas began to gingerly move his limbs. He discovered that he was in better shape than he thought, his lack of coordination slowly clearing after what must have been a savage blow to the head among many his face had received. The pain from the couple of bruised ribs had already been pushed to some minute corner of his consciousness. "It was probably nothing. It suddenly dawned on me that we had two modi operandi at work, and while we were all chasing after this emotionally stunted creature there was a totally different dynamic happening. Though Dean and I take every precaution, a cunning individual could have tracked any one of us back to our quarters to catch us unawares." He paused and then added, "Your Tim may be unusually strong for a woman, but she has no combat training to speak of. I worried that someone would exploit her vulnerability."

Sam was pulling out his phone. "Hey Tim! Yeah, it's good to hear the sound of your voice too, babe," he blushed a little, glancing at his passenger. "Everything's fine. I mean, Cas looks like he's been cage fighting. Maybe I should take you to a hospital," the younger Winchester offered but Cas waved him off. "Can you believe that Dean had not one, but two secret admirer shifters? Yep, two copycats trying to pass themselves off as him. Wait, let me tell him. Put him on the line." Sam paused, his brow furrowed. "He's not there? Have you heard from him? Let me call you back, baby, I'd rather call Ev and Zip myself."

"They haven't seen him," Castiel stated after the calls were made.

"Zip wasn't answering. Last time anybody knew he was with you. Here, track his phone. No, trust me: it's easy. I have an app for keeping tabs on my brother. Press the little green dohicky on the screen," the driver instructed, passing over his telephone. "Zoom in on the map, you take your fingers—"

"I know perfectly well how to use a touch screen, Sam, I use them all day at work," the former angel snapped, not in the mood for more teasing about his poor grasp of modern telephony.

"Well?" Sam asked, also a trifle testy.

"It's pointing right back to the tunnels. Sam," he laid a hand on the man's arm. "Not only are neither of us prepared for another round for any remaining shifters, I don't think he's there. You might call it lover's intuition, but I have had an intense sense of foreboding all day," he said with complete sincerity. "I am somewhat accustomed to the idea that I could lose Dean in any number of ways when he is hunting, but today I have been possessed of the idea that I could lose him so soon, far too soon." The prospect was too painful to be borne and must have registered on his face.

The brother glanced at his passenger a few times. "Are you sure you don't want to go to a hospital, Cas? Dean's sure to turn up, and you were down for the count."

"I am fine," Cas declared for as much his benefit as the brother's. "I have sustained a head injury of some severity, but if you don't mind, I'd rather give myself the CAT scan at the lab, should it prove necessary. Every time I'm put under a scanning device by strangers there are lots of burdensome questions about the shoddy job I did with creating my own skeletal structure."

They rode the rest of the way in silence and Cas got out of the car on his own power, his mind focused on the task ahead.

He knew he was right the moment he opened the door. "Hello, Tim," he said to the woman on the couch.

"Baby," Sam gathered his partner up in his arms and received a kiss. "I bagged a bad guy, honey, I'm going to need more than that."

While Sam was unwinding in much the same way he and Dean would be doing had everything not gone terribly wrong, Castiel brought out the good liquor and some shot glasses. He knocked one back himself and then poured shots for the three of them, drinking his second down before the other two could grasp their portions.

Tim was looking inquiringly at Cas' alcoholic fervor. "Dean's missing, or rather, we don't know exactly where he is yet," Sam explained. "Did you pick anything up about him on the airwaves?"

"No, not at all," said the woman under his arm. "I mean, there was a ton going on. Cas was right about there being more than one shifter. Are you going to tell me what happened or make me ask my supernatural Twitter feed?"

The alcohol helped dull some of his physical discomfort but did little for Cas' state of mind. The apartment felt like his lover. Some essence of Dean was calling to him from everywhere. It was agony to know how many obstacles he would have to surmount to be close to Dean in all of the flesh he had to offer.

"Cas, Cas! Do you want Tim to give her Ouija another go for news of Dean now that things have kind of died down? I bet that whole shifter convention couldn't wait to make tracks," he finally heard Sam saying.

"Of course, thank you," he said to his guest, who went to the pantry and was there a few minutes.

"This gal is something else, Cas. She channeled Gandhi for me once as a surprise, knowing I'm a fan, and from the accent alone I swear it was him."

Castiel let his worry speak for him as Sam became more comfortable expressing his feelings for his new relationship. Sam trusted far less easily than his brother, and this affection that had sprouted among inhospitable terrain was obviously in full flower.

Finally, the woman returned. "Sorry, Cas, I tried some of my usuals and some not-so-usual sources. Nobody knows," she said apologetically, sliding into place underneath Sam's arm once more.

"Cheer up, dude, you know how moody Dean is," Sam asserted. "Maybe he got pissed at having to go back on the job after retiring and he's waiting until I leave town to come home. Maybe he's stressed about the wedding thing. It's not like he's going to run off on you. I've never seen him look so happy as when I walked in that door earlier today. If there's one thing my brother knows, it's what side his bread is buttered on. You'd basically have to put him in a sack and drop him in the woods to get rid of him at this point."

The former angel's face remained impassive, but the offhand comment touched a tender place inside him. The couple chattered on. Castiel took another shot to help calm the dermal upset caused by the shifter who had assumed Tim's body. If every fiber of his being didn't feel like it was on fire, he would have also known by the false reading the stranger had given. The real Tim would have picked up some indication that Dean was in terrible danger.

His eons of discipline helped Cas concentrate on executing the only plan that had occurred to him. "Unless there's something you need, I'm going to go to bed. Perhaps, as you say, Dean will show up any minute."

"'Night, Cas." "Goodnight."

Castiel had a brief struggle with himself as he undressed and slipped into a bed that still smelled of his lover. Dean would be furious that he was allowing his brother to bed a complete stranger who had taken Tim's form. Sam could possibly kill Cas for having created the mutation that he thought of as his girlfriend—and for doing the same to his brother. But Castiel was quite aware that Sam would surely wring his neck for not letting on that some unknown shifter was going to copulate with him tonight.

"If I had told anyone I also bear the mutation we would have both been imprisoned and probably killed," he told the image of his betrothed that came into his mind in the dark. "I was slipping in and out of consciousness for some time, and I heard just how many of them there were. This is an extremely well-organized group that was posted all around the tunnel system they've used as a meeting place for many years. The leader was quite confident that my friends would come looking for me, and you all walked right into that tight space that would have been all of our deaths, had there not been some kind of bargain. I couldn't lose you before-"

He couldn't fully express himself, even to the imaginary man he carried with him always. The mental image of Dean alternated between the face he knew well, looking at him with utter betrayal, and the female appearance Cas saw underground, whose betrayal was layered over with a naked fear. "Don't you see, my love? The chances of my summoning any of my old associates in that room were practically none. At least now, if it becomes necessary, I have a chance of bargaining your safety with my soul or pseudo-soul, which might have value as a curiosity. Only trust me to first use the one power that these creatures are truly afraid of."

Castiel floated off into dreams of his lover in all the guises they'd shared, but mostly the

Dean with whom he hoped to spend the rest of eternity. If he'd not been so worried, hurt and exhausted, his consciousness might have remarked on it. Since becoming human he dreamt little, probably another by-product of his synthetic makeup. The handful of dreams he'd had were of far-off points in human history such as a random conversation he'd had in the Shang dynasty period, or, more likely, furious angelic battles like the ones that had taken up so much of his long existence but to his unconscious all seemed the same.

He dreamt of a smaller version of his old angelic form wrapped around Dean's body from behind, his wings experiencing every inch of the beloved skin as if they were myriad fingers.

The only food substance Castiel was allowed to prepare was eggs. Everything else—which in their apartment mostly meant coffee and mixed drinks, even sandwiches, along with the occasional steak—was strictly Dean's territory. Who would have thought his fiancés palate was such much more refined than the new human's tongue, which found almost all food delicious or at least interesting. Eggs were a medicinal product in their home, however, as they were the best cure for a hangover, according to Dean, who did more than his fair share of the drinking. The preparation of hen eggs into comestibles was pure chemistry and thus, Cas felt confident sliding the plates in front of his two guests shortly after they emerged from their bedroom.

"Wow, Cas, this is awesome," Sam said after a cautious bite. "Dean didn't show up," he stated from the blank expression and mechanical movements he'd come to associate with the ex-angel's upset.

"No. I am sorry there is no coffee, but I am told what I prepare is not fit for human consumption."

"I'll do it," Tim said brightly.

As breakfast ensued, Cas was prepared to point Sam's concern in the most useful direction. "So, do you think we should form a search party? I mean, Dean could've lost his phone at some point and be anywhere by now. I say Tim is our best hope. Thanks for the coffee, babe."

"Yes, I think it is most urgent we find both Dean and Zip," their host agreed. "I've already called Evan and there's been no word. Zip hasn't answered for many hours."

It didn't take the group very long to locate Zip in an area hospital after having been well on his way to bleeding to death before a good Samaritan called it in. "Ya'll do realize that we stepped in a big pile of somethin' with this job?" he asked all bandaged and tethered with tubes. "And before you ask, I didn't see a damn thing, or I'd have stood up and walked my IV over to take he, she or it out my self."

"We know we're not looking at a best-case scenario," Sam said, filling in their hunter friend on the evening's events. It was a group of serious faces waiting for Zip's discharge when Evan showed up with paradise all over his face.

Zip burst out laughing. "Boy, I'm glad somebody else got lucky last night. I got cut a fraction of an inch from being measured for a halo, so they say."

They all went back to regroup at the apartment, Castiel with his weapon at the ready. Should the imposter feel that anyone suspected that the Zip who came to check on Tim was not really the old hunter, it might feel threatened enough to attack.

But the alley where the real Zip had been left for dead was only one street away from where Cas and Dean lived, and the timeline was so close that no one suspected a thing. Castiel listened to the false psychic weave stories about messages from supposed spirit entities. With the other three men bustling around the familiar hunter activity was almost homey to him, if it were possible to have a home without Dean.

Finally, Sam asked, "So, Cas, do you want to go with the group heading back to the tunnels, or do you want to come with me to see if Tim's Ouija intel pans out?"

"Neither. I have an urgent matter at the lab," he said to the group's surprise. "There is no one else who fully understands my experiments, and this batch of recombinant DNA will be spoiled if I don't check on it."

"Okay," Sam said doubtfully. "We'll be in touch."

By now, Castiel came and went as he pleased at the NIH facility. The fact that it was a weekend morning when he opened up his corridor was not really cause for comment.

He worked for hours, though his vision was still blurry and his body needed to rest. The scientist only took one break to go aboveground where he was able to use his telephone so that he could speak to Sam.

"Yes, I realize Dean's prolonged absence is of great concern, Sam." He listened to the angry remarks about his own priorities. "I will be home soon. Please do not leave town before we can discuss the right course of action together."

As he worked on the antagonist agent, Castiel wished he could go back in time and make it more potent. He'd only made something that would last a short time, thinking that if one of his two friends got stuck in an inopportune shift, this would shield them from any questions his colleagues might have. He'd almost used it on Dean when his lover had clearly changed something other than his height.

Castiel hummed to calm his worry. The shelf-stable version he'd crafted over the last several hours was less effective than he would have liked, but he had tried it on himself twice and felt that it would work well enough for his purposes. Utterly exhausted, he showed up at the apartment and avoided Sam's glare to go straight to his room and un-tape all the phials of the substance he'd taped inside his clothing.

He showered alone, which always made him miss pressing Dean against the tiled wall, which forced him to release his tensions in lonely self-stimulation, which reminded him of Dean's lessons on the best techniques for achieving release, which led Castiel to excrete his first tears of grief—any previous secretions being related to pain, pleasure, or the occasional bout of extreme happiness.

Dressed in clothes that had been selected by his vanished lover, Castiel came out to face the wrath Sam Winchester had been storing up during his sojourn in the lab.

The brother was understandably too upset to notice, but Castiel could clearly see the utter lack of concern emanating from the false Tim, when the two of them had always gotten on very well. He wondered again what exactly the entity intended to do now that it was on intimate terms with one of the two most famous hunters in North America. Finally, he could listen no more and cut in, "Would you mind taking out your frustrations on me while I pack? Then you can resume projecting upon me in the car."

"What?" Sam was brought up short. "You're all 9-to-5, business as usual while your boyfriend is missing and suddenly you're going to chuck your very important job to go on the road to go look for him?"

"That's it precisely. We could take two cars—we have a parking space nearby and I do have my license, you know."

The response was exactly as he desired. "Uh, until you guys are actually married and you show me a prenup stipulating that you can drive the Impala, I don't want to piss Dean off. Let me drive."

"Splendid. Allow me to put together a few essentials and you can drive the Impala to long-term parking yourself. Tim and I will follow."

It didn't take long to pack up the life that Castiel had been so proud to construct with Dean. He used the short ride in the car with the supposed Tim to gather intelligence but was unable to divine any reason for why this stranger had stolen this particular life.

"Sam seems very happy with your relationship," he observed to pass the time. "I know him very well, and I've never seen him this content. He doesn't know that I was the one who helped make your gender reassignment possible?"

"No, but I try not to talk about going under the knife too much. Sam's a catch, whatever way you look at it. Worth the sacrifice," the person said after the slightest delay. It wasn't the first time he'd seen the thing give vague answers while it put together parts of Tim's past it didn't seem quite sure of. Interesting, Castiel thought.

"I won't tell Sam I used my connections to get you into the experimental program, then," he pursued.

"Best we keep it between ourselves," Tim beamed at him. "You're a real sweetheart. Now I see why Dean calls you his angel."

This shifter's inability to recreate Tim's memories was tremendously reassuring.

They met Sam outside the parking structure and Castiel received the parking card and the keys. "What are you two smiling about?" he asked, heading the group back to his own car.

"Nothing. I forget what a good egg Cas is. You should be nicer to him," the woman said.

Sam got in the car with his own smile, while Castiel wondered momentarily why the shifter was bringing up his cooking skills. As soon as all the doors were closed he plunged the syringe into her neck and then had the gun muzzle pointed at the thing while it flailed.

"What the fuck?" Sam had his own gun-hopefully with regular rounds-pointed at Cas. "You killed my girlfriend, you animatronic piece of crap!"

But it was only a few moments before it became apparent that the creature in the passenger's seat was no girl.

"This is what I was doing in the lab," Castiel explained as Sam recoiled in horror from the balding, 40-something man whose potbelly was bursting out of the dress he'd been wearing. "I had thought of cutting it with a silver knife, but suspected you might kill me before you noticed the slight smoking the weapon created upon the skin. And my research was equivocal about whether or not they reverted to their true form at death."

"What—What are you going to do to me? What is this stuff? How did you take away my powers?" the shifter was asking with both guns pointed on it now.

"It's a substance to temporarily block the action of your mutation," Cas answered at the same time that Sam was yelling, "How long! How long have I been screwing Danny DeVito?"

While Castiel was relating the pronoun slip he'd heard on the phone with Zip-which might not have meant anything at all-the shapeshifter was laughing. "I totally didn't realize I did that. Sharp ears on this one. And I will always remember last night, Sam," he said breathily.

Sam punched him full in the face. "Shut up! Let me figure out what to do with you and I promise you'll never forget it!"

"Let him go," Castiel said.

"What? I'm not going to let this stranger, this thing I had sex with last night run off so it can do it to someone else! That's like the worst violation of privacy. And besides, I bet it knows where Dean is."

The former angel felt a stab of sympathy for the vanished Tim, who could have easily been sitting there receiving a similar speech. "It's only a temporary antidote. In a few hours at most it will be able to shift and eventually get away from us. Who knows if these beings are in constant communication with each other or not? It would be best if we don't incite the ire of their organization by killing another one."

With his reasonable voice, Castiel talked and talked until the thoroughly shaken Sam lowered his weapon. "Out. Here. Now. I hope you get picked up for indecency." He pushed out the corpulent little man and drove off, tires squealing.

The driver stopped some distance away to vomit. His passenger moved to the front seat. "Sam, I am truly sorry for your discomfort," he said, laptop in his lap.

"Jeez, Cas, this isn't a time to check your email," Sam complained, taking a swig of water. "Actually, I don't know what to do at a moment like this."

"We track it, that's what," Cas spun around the computer. "The reversal treatment was the best I could do under the short time frame, but including a tiny tracking device is well within the capabilities of NIH."

Sam gave him an incredulous look and then gazed at the dot on the city map. "That's him?"

"Yes, but while he's trying to steal some gender-appropriate clothing, I suggest we make a stop in Ohio."

"Ohio? I'm going to look for Tim's body, that's what I'm going to do." He spun the car around. "Freakish bastards. I finally have a good thing going—"

"I have a very good reason to believe that Tim is alive," Castiel stated. "Let me show you in her bag." He pulled the carry-all from the backseat and dumped out the contents. See what's missing?"

"Her folding Ouija board." Sam gave a sharp glance. "How long have you known, really?"

"I only searched her bag this morning right before we walked out the door," Cas lied. He'd gone through her things with the pretext of providing clean towels the first night. He remembered Tim saying that since he met Sam, he never went anywhere without the cloth version of his divination device, because he never knew when he might get some urgent request.

"You didn't happen to inject a tracking device in Tim or Dean and forget to mention it?" the Winchester man rubbed his face. "I don't even know where to start. Maybe we should split up."

"No, I disagree. While I was in and out of consciousness I heard a lot of voices, many, many voices coming in and out of the bunker and talk as if there were more close by. We're lucky we got out alive, Sam, but more to the point, I noticed that the main accent I heard was the distinctive accent used in Ohio, you know, rather nasal, 'pin' becomes 'pen,' 'milk' is pronounced 'melk.'" He could see that Sam was too overwhelmed to understand. "Whether or not they were using their real faces in front of us, the people whose form they assumed—at least those in the leadership positions, like that woman, Sarah —"

"If she really is a woman," Sam muttered.

"They all spoke with similar accents. Perhaps it's easier for me to notice these things because all human speech is still somewhat alien."

"Then get to the point, for God's sake." Sam had pulled over to lay his head on the steering wheel.

"I say we track this individual but don't count on his knowing anything useful. In the meantime, we go to Ohio on what you may call a lover's intuition. Perhaps both of our partners are being held there. I don't mind driving if you are still unwell."

Sam gave him a lethal glare and screeched back on the road.

It did give him pause to mislead Sam about his lover's whereabouts, Cas considered. He had no idea where Tim was, but it surely wasn't the same place where Dean was being held. He had a great deal of faith in Tim's ingenuity, especially when it came to his strong drive to love. With Tim's divination talent, he had little doubt that their friend would find them shortly. He'd gotten away from the shifter somehow. Perhaps the intruder was surprised to scent something other than human in in Tim and the latter had used this to his advantage. A cunning like that would locate the hunters heading north in no time.

Or that's what the former angel told his conscience as they drove.

His first lesson about life on the run was going pretty well, Tim thought. He'd paid attention to all Sam's stories about hitching rides and keeping a low profile, and used some long-ago table-waiting experience to scrape together enough money to get from stop to stop. It was all engrossing enough that he didn't have much time to think about Sam.

Tim had lost his carefully constructed life so fast that only once the adrenaline abated somewhat could Tim piece together how it happened.

He'd opened the door for Zip for the second time, somewhat annoyed to be called away from the confusing but ominous picture he was piecing together from the airwaves. "Hey, Zip, everything's all right?" he'd had time to say before the gun was on him, quickly to be replaced by a knife.

"So, I see I'm not the only one with a secret," Zip gloated with the hot knife to Tim's throat. "You must be the bitch who's scenting the whole town with, mmm, that 's actually pretty nice." Tim tried to wriggle away from the hands running up and down her neck and then he shuddered to feel a tongue licking his skin. "You stay put, honey, don't call nobody because I could just as easily make my own call," he brandished Zip's phone.

Tim tore himself away, only to be paralyzed by the nauseating spectacle of the Zip's skin, teeth and other exterior parts dropping to the floor to reveal—Tim's female self. He was somewhat surprised that the thing hadn't become his regular male unshifted self, but didn't have time to worry about it.

"What say I give Sam Winchester a call right now using this voice?" the stranger asked. "Why don't we wait for him to come back and try and pick which one is the real deal?" He sliced Tim across the arm and they watched the smoke. "He'll be wrong either way, because I'm positive that hunter poster boy doesn't know what he's been screwing. Are you even a gal in there? 'Cause chances are you ain't this Giselle Bundchen lookalike, sweetheart. Most of us aren't. Too bad your beau's not going to worry that pretty little head of his." The knife was at Tim's jugular while he watched his other self load a silver round into the gun. "Now strip so your clothes don't get blood on them. I want to be fresh when Sam comes home."

Undressing mechanically, something in Tim considered. He was ready to die, perhaps. He'd been on the verge of suicide at several points during the last year. But to give up his first relationship in years to someone off the street? Never. Something helped Tim's mind snap back into action when the hammer cocked on the gun. "Wait! Maybe we can come to an understanding," he said, holding the clothes close to him.

"What do you have that I haven't already got?" the lewd smile sat oddly on his own face.

"You win, okay. I don't know what you want with Sam, but I know when I've been beat," Tim said on instinct. "You give me a head start, I'll hit the road right now and never come back, never use this face again. You'll tell Sam what I really am, otherwise, so you hold all the cards."

His other self took a few moments to accept the line he'd just been fed. "That's right, cunt, I have every advantage. Why should I let you live?"

"Because of the eensy problem of disposing of my body," Tim said patiently. "What are you going to do? Put me out on the curb? It's not even trash night," he fibbed. "Just let me put on some clothes and you'll never see me again. I don't know what you are either, but I suspect we have more in common than not," he choked out the appeal to the thing's sympahty.

The shifter held a gun to Tim's head while he put on workout clothes and palmed the Ouija cloth in with some underwear. "All right, now get, honey. Get before I change my mind. Unless you have any pointers about how Sam likes it. Hey," the other Tim appeared to be consulting something. "You're not an easy one to track. I can only see so far back except—" he grinned. "Wow, that stood out loud and clear. I see how you like it. Man, you let him do that to you any night of the week? That's all I need to know for starters."

Tim slammed the door on the thief of his intimate life. By the time he was out on the street he was a man again. Alone again.

He kept tabs on Cas, Dean and Sam whenever he had a private moment to Ouija, and he was concerned that Dean had apparently gone up to Ohio by himself. When he heard the news that his (ex-)boyfriend and Cas were heading in that direction, Tim finally had his own personal breakdown in a nasty motel room outside Philadelphia. Sheer survival instinct had gotten him to New York before he stopped and realized he was going in the wrong direction.

His priorities straight, Tim had already stolen someone's identity long enough to buy a gun and was working on figuring out how to make a silver round and, you know, shoot a gun. Because he only logical step was to kill the thing that had taken away his happiness. Twice, he was about to dial Sam's number but he chickened out at the thought that his Bizarro-self had spilled the beans about what Tim had done to win the best guy he'd ever met.

But now his very best sources (he had a couple of witch ancestors who were now on his speed-dial) assured Tim that Sam was on the road accompanied with nothing stranger than the fallen angel known as Castiel. Tim allowed himself a good cry. "Someone must have tipped them off about where Dean is, but they don't know where I am," he said to the wall of that depressing room. "Most psychics are only right one try out of ten, Sam says. Dean must've been the one lucky break."

Tim cried his eyes out, every tear he'd stored up in all the years of facing life alone. Having someone to care about must soften you up, he considered. But it also made you fight. He dried his eyes and considered which of his stolen IDs he should wear on the first leg of the journey to Ohio. Tim knew exactly where Sam was headed, and if there was any chance he could still save things, he was going to take it.

"Why do you keep flinching away like that? I've shown you in every possible way the needles are clean!" the shifter doctor griped. "See there, I have to stick you again. Hold still, because you're not going anywhere."

For someone who hated doctors, Dean Winchester had sure been spending a lot of time in shady healthcare facilities. He'd thought nothing could be creepier than the NIH lab, but that was fun times compared to this ominously high-tech small country infirmary in the middle of nowhere. And then there was the fact that at NIH he could talk to Cas looking all sexy in his white coat. Whereas here, well, the shifter doctor had tried a kindly-looking male and female body before resigning himself to an uncooperative patient.

The silver chains they had wrapped all around Dean were making his body numb. "Can't you like, loosen these or something? You must know exactly how crappy they're making me feel."

The doctor looked over his glasses. "Perhaps if you tell me how you're doing it, I might consider making you more comfortable." He hit a buzzer. "Ah, here we go. Another test. Yes, send Annalee in."

An attractive woman with dark hair and caramel-colored skin came in the room. "Shift into her," the doctor commanded his prisoner-patient.

Dean sighed and did as he was told, knowing full well he'd make a ton of mistakes without the benefit of a mirror.

"Show him, Annalee." The woman blushed and took down her pants, revealing a very unfeminine attachment. "My next-door neighbors went on a vacation in Cabo a couple months ago and came across this very interesting mutation. Her husband asked her to keep it for a while." Dean stared. "Everyone knows everything in our community sooner or later. But you," the doctor lifted up Dean's gown.

"You've gotta at least buy me dinner first, I don't want you to think I'm easy," the hunter quipped with an ease he didn't feel.

"You made yourself entirely a woman. You're not copying her present DNA nor her intrinsic genetic makeup. Every one of us who's come in here has shifted into something different after touching you, and none of us can get a clear read on your memories. Which may have something to do with the fact that your genetic makeup does change but is consistently unlike anything I've ever seen. And you never shed so much as a hair. Tell me if you've always been this way, let me understand. Perhaps I could make improvements in the lives of my people," the doctor pleaded.

"Here's hoping they have someone other than Dr. Frankenstein on their HMO," Dean remarked, returning to his Japanese form, which now felt very comfortable for him since he'd seen his own worst qualities worn by someone else.

"No, you don't understand," Annalee spoke up. "Some of our kind have been discovered by scientists before and—" she shuddered—"Just because we can shift a wound doesn't mean it doesn't hurt."

The doctor was nodding sympathetically, which Dean thought to be rather hypocritical considering the Dr. Mengele-like experiments the thing had administered to him.

"There's always at least a few people from the shifter world sent to medical school so we never run that risk," the doctor continued. "Not that their science always applies to us, but a broken bone should be reset, an infection is an infection and can get the best of anyone sooner or later."

"Tell us what you are, and then you can live here," Annalee said in a rush of sympathy. "It's nice, knowing that you don't have to pretend and that no one will hurt you. The only other people way out here are Amish, and sometimes one of us is born to one of them, so they don't bother us. Or there's a colony in Florida. There are a few places you can go and be safe."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," the doctor said sternly. "Something like this would have to be voted in, and not everyone wants this mixed into our gene pool."

"You seem like your gene pool could use some mixing," the patient couldn't resist saying. "Not like I'm volunteering. I'm betrothed."

Dean wasn't sure why he was continuing think about the boyfriend who'd not said one peep to try and help him. He supposed he was clinging to the memory of the good Cas, the completely reliable Cas, because if he gave that up he'd really be at rock-bottom. "Nothing to tell. I am what I am, you are what you are. Can we skip to the part where you bring me something to eat? I'm starving."

"Annalee, have Karen come in on your way out," the doctor said curtly, snapping on some gloves.

The assistant who'd brought her own sadistic cheerleader touch to Dean's medical Inquisition came back into the room, which never meant anything good. His knees were forced apart with the strength he was coming to expect from these shifters. "Okay, Dr. Jekyll, can you shift into Mr. Hyde or maybe Mrs. Hyde, or whichever part of you is the most human," he gasped while struggling to keep his legs out of the stirrups.

"I have tried a CAT scan, which told me absolutely nothing remarkable except a tendency to certain pelvic deformities. You refuse to answer my questions, I have to resort to extreme measures. This is the one exam I did not want to have to perform."

The idea of any part of himself, especially, his female self, being probed by a stranger was simply unbearable. Dean gritted his teeth and shifted his pelvis into a male one, accomplishing it almost instantaneously out of fright.

"Fine, we'll proceed however you wish," the doctor said, reaching for a tube.

Dean had no choice. Bound and utterly alone, he had nothing else to do but go to his happy place.

He'd started imagining pleasant things the first time they sliced him deeply with a regular knife and then a silver one and compared how long it took him to shift the wound. (They weren't counting the profanity it cost him to learn how to extend the minimal healing he had learned how to do—after especially naughty evenings with Cas—to figuring out how to put an arm's worth of skin back on.)

Since then, he'd been shot in one foot with a silver bullet and the other with a regular one. Giving him some ointment helped the healing process in both cases, a fact duly noted in the doctor's ever-present clipbard, but only after he'd screamed himself hoarse for about 15 minutes. (The silver bullet one still hurt like a bitch someplace far off). Dean had been run through their CAT scan so many times he was sure he glowed in the dark, but was afraid to mention it because that might be the next sadistic test.

And the worst was the steady parade of townspeople who were allowed to look in the window during some of it. Only then did it really strike Dean what he'd given up when Cas made his DNA zig where it should've zagged. Because there's nothing to make you feel lower than low than watching a parade of freaks stare at you with their silver eyes like you were the one who was on the wrong side of the bars at the zoo.

During one of these moments he'd conjured up the good things about life with Cas. He thought of his boyfriend asking very seriously about the meaning of slang expressions and then trying to use it in the right way, and failing adorably. He remembered them standing there speechless in front of the realtor, unable to believe that they were going to live in such a nice stationary place—together. Mostly, he didn't think about what they did in bed, but of lying there falling asleep or waking up together. And that was when Dean thought of Castiel singing.

They'd had many a sing-along contest together, but when they were home, Dean liked listening to Cas sing to himself the best. Sometimes he woke up with his lover playing with his hair and singing very softly. There was one thing in particular he heard over and over on his way to or from sleep. Dean asked Cas about it once, recognizing the sound of sung Enochian by now but of course not its meaning.

"It's a fragment of a hymn that reminds me of you," was all Cas said. "Would you like to learn?"

Enochian usually gave Dean the willies, but for some reason this line didn't. He formed the syllables in his mind so powerfully he almost heard them in Cas' voice. The gloved hand was now holding some instrument whose purpose Dean's brain stubbornly refused to imagine and he began humming the syllables, first quietly, then more insistently. He gritted his teeth and all but shouted the words, preparing to be violated—

The doctor and his instrument was now on the other side of the room. The shifter stood up as the assistant backed herself into a corner. "What was that? What did you just do?"

"Yeah, Dr. Giggles, who's laughing now?" Dean wasn't, but he felt slightly better about his situation.

He stayed silent during the doctor's futile attempts to get anywhere near whatever genitalia Dean possessed at the moment. When the assistant came at him with the syringe and plunged it in his arm with more force than necessary, he drifted off to dreams that were blessedly pain free, and with some hope that no one would give him the white glove test while he was out.

"Cas, you sly bastard," he said to his former lover in his dream. "You had me tattoo the equivalent of 'Step back, this is property of Castiel' in Enochian on my back and then you just walk away without telling me how to activate it? Why didn't you say it was me when you had the chance? You'd rather leave me with a bunch of inbred circus freaks than risk pissing Sam off?"

He talked and he talked at the image of the face he used to trust, but all Castiel did was smile in response.


	13. Chapter 13

"Tim!" Sam ran towards his girlfriend who was standing half in shadow in a warehouse parking lot in South Point, Ohio, that was their designated meet up spot. "Are you okay? Why didn't you call me right away? Cas figured out you were still alive, but there's a lot of freaks out there and I wasn't sure, I mean how did you get way out here?"

"I listened to all your survival on the run lessons, so this girl was fine," Tim said, his arms around Sam's neck.

"It's very good to see the real you," Castiel said. "I unmasked the imposter very quickly, and Sam has talked of little but finding you," he said as a way to reassure his friend that her secret was still safe.

"But that thing said if I tried to contact you at all it would kill you," Tim shuddered, remembering the creature going to pieces before her eyes. "And I've been wandering around kind of crazy, trying to figure out how to kill it, how to help you get Dean back."

Sam led the woman to their car and sat there in the back seat next to her as if fearing she would disappear. "So you know about that? I guess you would have to, to have ended up in bumfuck Ohio." He sighed contentedly. "That's how I know it's the real you, babe. Some of my contacts have said somewhere in Amish country near the Canadian border is the most likely spot, but we don't have anything more specific than that, other than Cas listening to people's accents and maybe shining a light into their eyes."

"That's why I finally decided to risk calling you, Sam. I knew you'd be heading straight into a world of trouble because you're hell-bent on getting your brother back. We need to hang back a minute."

"What?" Sam protested. "These things have like no conscience, Tim. They'll impersonate anyone to get whatever they want." He shuddered and Castiel and Tim exchanged a look laden with meaning. "Whatever they want my brother for, it isn't good. Cas has this blowgun setup where he thinks a temporary antidote to their mutation will freak them out, but I say there's nothing like a silver bullet to the head to make people see things your way."

"In the lab I was able to manufacture a substance to reverse a shift, but it doesn't last long, and I only have so much of it," Castiel explained. "Neither of our plans is particularly good. Do you have some intelligence to share?"

Tim nestled inside the arm that fit him so well and talked about everything the ether had been blaring at him when he'd calmed down enough to hear it. "He's being held in a town called Tiberion and it is near the Canadian border. It's built like a fortress and it's not all that small, Sam. The number of shifters in the US is increasing pretty fast—they've got some pronatalist idea that if they reproduce as much as possible, they'll keep establishing more colonies and eventually break off into their own nation. There's a big one in Florida, too, I hear."

"Yes, in the middle of the swamps. Your, er, impersonator headed straight there after we left him in DC. His tracking device stopped somewhere in the Everglades," Castiel pointed to the glowing dot on his computer screen.

"He? You know for sure what it was? My Ouija sources can't say one way or the other about these things."

Sam cringed uncomfortably. "Can we talk about something else?" He buried his face in Tim's feminine neck.

"My antidote revealed this one's natural form as male. It's interesting that their gender would be indeterminate on an astral level," Castiel said abstractedly.

"Cas," groaned Sam. "I admit, baby, we're going in half-cocked"—he whispered privately into her ear "or maybe a little more than that. I'm really glad to see you"—"But we've got to create some kind of disturbance and grab Dean. He knows every page from the Winchester playbook. He'll be playing along. And we'll have the element of surprise."

"About that, the thing that stole my body said he could recognize my smell—are these things like dogs and can sense you coming?" Tim glanced at Cas.

"Yes, I heard them talking about scenting people when I was briefly their prisoner." And then Cas said significantly. "Some more than others."

Tim nodded, message received. "It's suicide for us to rush into a settlement of a few thousand shifters stretched all along the border." He nodded at Sam's surprise. "This isn't bum-rushing a bar that's being held captive by zombies. I think we need to plan, maybe ask some more questions of my sources now that I can think straight," she finished shyly. "I really missed you, Sam."

Castiel was staring off into space while the couple got reacquainted on the way to a motel. "I'm sorry, Cas, you must be out of your mind worried about Dean," Tim broke off.

"Not until I have exhausted every possibility," he said in his usual tone of voice.

He let the couple have use of the motel room so that they could comfort one another, and in Sam's case, reaffirm his masculinity. He used the time to make a call.

"Castiel, it's been what, a day since you last asked? And I checked, I really did, so this is really overkill," Balthazar said from the circle of flames. "It's a state secret. No one will tell me whether you have a soul to bargain with, but even if you did, shouldn't you be bargaining with the other blokes down south who do soul bargains?"

"I assumed it would be more valuable for your side to learn how to mint souls out of angels, Heaven possessing the raw materials, if indeed I created one with my assumed humanity." Castiel replied evenly. "Although perhaps such a technology might benefit the demons as well."

"Don't play hardball with me, Cas, you know exactly where I stand in the heavenly hierarchy—no one trusts me much farther than they can throw me." The angel smiled as if savoring something.

"If you hadn't been so possessive about your boyfriend then perhaps I could have been induced to zap into that colony of mutants and pluck out the mutant of your affections," Balthazar said, "But as it stands, I can't lay a finger on him because he only has eyes for you. Too bad, because I must say, dear brother, you look very—satisfied. Dean is turning out to be everything you always said he was, isn't he? He's certainly bent himself in every possible—and some heretofore impossible—shape to please you, Castiel. And he can't get enough, can he? Perhaps you were listening to all those tidbits I taught you about the mammalian pleasure response?"

"You can take no credit for love, my brother," Cas said, trying to regain control of the conversation with the one former comrade for whom he had any warm feelings at all. "I conjured you here to ask nothing more than if you had acquired any information, and so I hope our détente still stands."

Balthazar burst out laughing. "How can you still have that prim and proper stick up your ass when everyone knows what you've been getting up to with your Winchester—Oh, I forgot, that's not how he likes it."

"I would think there are more pressing global matters for the Heavenly army than my love life." The phrase made his cheeks hot.

"There's always something, dear brother, you know that, but the 'Cas-and-Dean' soap opera has long been our favorite show. It's like him and Sam sacrificing for each other all over again, except with surprisingly raunchy sex. Castiel! Quite the dom, who would've thought?"

"You are telling me things I already know," Cas said stiffly, though with a secret pleasure. "What I wish to know is what I asked you the last time we spoke."

"How you can extort or steal your little semi-human wife-and-or-husband-to-be back. I'm not sure I have an easy answer, but I do hope I get a wedding invitation out of this," Balthazar gloated. "I'd add something to Dean's trousseau—perhaps a beautifully rendered binding sigil–oh, I forgot, you've got that boy locked down as your exclusive plaything. Very old-fashioned, Castiel, but at least your beloved has finally figured out how to use it for his advantage."

"What? Dean is as headstrong as ever and would leave me if he so desired," Cas said, surprised.

"As you left him in DC? What were you thinking, Cas? You and the Winchesters have gotten out of tighter spots."

"I've never had so much to lose before. Eternity is even longer when faced alone."

Balthazar said coolly. "You're on about this again. You know I can't tell you where you're headed even if I knew, which I don't. And this is what you signed up for, isn't it? Human existence, that one raw nerve of pain and pleasure floating in the great unknown? You'll have to be surprised about what comes next."

Castiel looked stricken.

"Come now, brother, you've been disowned. No one is exactly going to break the rules for you. What's in it for me? When you were breaking rules right and left for your crush, you had some hope of getting laid. Now I couldn't cop a feel if I tried."

"Why do you keep saying that, brother? You do not want for diversions."

"The tramp stamp locking your lover to you? In our book you're already married with that thing on his back."

"It's a psalm of love," Cas protested in horror.

"Yada, yada, 'what has been fucked six ways from Sunday may never be broken asunder?' Or something to that effect. You always had a better memory for the textual citations. And excellent penmanship. That design says clearly that you are not willing to share with your brothers, not one square inch of Dean. No angel's going to get within a yard of that boy toy of yours without getting burned, if that's what you wanted, so now how do you propose I help, if I were so inclined?"

The former angel was finally parsing the equation: "Enochian script + Blood = Magic." "I meant to do no such thing! I would never take away Dean's will."

"No one's saying you did, brother. From what I can tell, your sweetheart is learning how to flex the spell himself and is finally holding his captors at bay."

"Here you go, isn't this nicer than Doc Mowry's clinic?" Annalee chirped as she fastened Dean's silver chain to an iron ring going through the floor of her kitchen. Now, don't even think of trying to pull that up—my husband poured that into concrete when we had our first little one."

Before Dean could fathom whether he would actually prefer to still be in the clinic instead of being adopted by this very cheerful soccer mom/hermaphrodite, he heard her hollering form the fridge. "Who's been eating all my bread pudding?" She sniffed the air. "Is that you over there, Robbie Smith?" A towheaded boy peeped up over the couch from where he was watching cartoons. "Come here, then!"

The shamefaced boy brought in a half-eaten bowl of pudding. "You didn't have to switch places with my Andy. I would've sent you home with a whole batch," she said kindly. The boy began to shudder. "Don't do that here, son, go on home and change. Send Andy back while you're at it. It's his night to wash the dishes, I know how he thinks."

Judging from the barely curious glance the shifter boy gave to the strange woman tethered to the kitchen floor, Dean gathered this was not that unusual.

"And I thought my dad was a strict disciplinarian."

"When our babies were little we were always afraid of them getting mixed up with someone else's, and when they're that young they can forget who they are easy because they're touching and shifting into each other all the time. And little kids all kind of smell the same when they're in diapers, you know." She was taking food out and laying it on counter. "There's some kids in town around the same age that nobody's entirely sure which is which. After a while everybody has a different smell about them—but you, I've never," she approached and sniffed close to his skin, "I've never smelled anything like it, but it's very nice."

She batted her eyes at the exhausted hunter. "My husband, he's liking this," she gestured below her waist, "a whole lot. Think you'd ever like to walk on the wild side?"

"Sister, I've walked all over the wild side and there's only one person I want to walk it with. Why don't you let me go? You don't seem interested in experimenting on me."

"You never know," the woman said mischievously. "Besides, now you know where we live. What if that hunter you were sleeping with comes back with a bunch more? We can't have that. The doc will figure out how you're fending him off and then he'll see what's different about your DNA. Shifting hurts for us, you know. And our poor babies don't know how to keep themselves from it until they're about 7 or 8."

"You said you brought back this form on vacation. What were you before that? How do your kids know it's you?" Dean asked curiously.

"Because I know how to cook, unlike Mabel Smith, bless her heart. She's all thumbs in the kitchen no matter whose thumbs she's using. And my husband hates spiders. Hates 'em. If I really want to be sure that's him climbing in bed next to me there's one sure way to find out."

"You mean, you're all like wife-swapping, husband-swapping, all the time?" Even for Dean, the idea of living in a hillbilly porno movie was not attractive long-term.

"Come now, I bet you've become all kinds of things with your boyfriend, even more than us because you can just think about it, can't you." She pushed the long black hair away from his eyes. "See, you've done it all, just like us."

"With one person! Only one person!"

"They say that way back our community used to have a rule that people could only borrow. You know, there's somebody I have a hankering for, my husband borrows a piece of clothing or something from that man, and we have a little variety that night. But over time, people began to think, what's the difference between borrowing and trading for the night, or more than a night?"

"Because your children get really confused?"

"Here in Tiberion everything revolves around our children. Each family goes out once a year to get provisions and then we spend the rest of the time making a wonderful home for our young ones. Here, eat this sandwich while I get you some milk."

"I guess I can't point a finger when it comes to misappropriating other people's money," Dean admitted, devouring several bites of meatloaf sandwich in quick succession. "Wow, this is really good," he admitted when he came up for air.

"Save some room for supper, I'm about to put a roast in the oven," Annalee said while she went back to flouring some potatoes. "We don't go out more than we have to. I love it here. Being outside makes me nervous that some hunter will catch us. Though I guess our trip did give us a little more than we bargained for," she giggled smoothing her apron.

Dean tiredly watched the wom—whatever she was bustle around the kitchen. "Will you look at that, my husband will be home soon. He works on the civil guard, we call it. Defense and the like. Where is that boy of mine, I swear. The way the town knows my Andy is that he's the one who will go to any lengths to avoid a little work." She picked up the phone and handed the bowl of green beans to her captive/guest. "Will you top and tail for me, dear, I'm— Yes, is this Mabel? Hi Mabel, do you have my Andy? Isn't he the worst lazybones you've ever seen? Have you got Robbie back? Good. Yes, I do have a guest tonight. If you'd like to, you can bring your family for dessert. No, no need to bring anything, she's helping. Yes she is. See you around 7:30 then?"

The woman hung up. "Heaven preserve us from one of Mabel Smith's confections. If you don't mind, I'd love some help with these apples for a cobbler."

Dean cored, peeled and began slicing the apples while weighing his options. "You wouldn't have given me this knife if it would do any real damage to you," he finally said.

"That old thing? No, sweetheart, the only silver we keep is so our children won't shift away from their homework, that sort of thing. Young or old, a silver chain will make you more docile, and that's a fact. Do you have a name? I feel strange introducing you to company without one."

"You can call me Miki. Short for Mikiko." Dean watched the dessert assembled rapidly before his eyes. "You wouldn't happen to have something a little more family-style for me to wear, would you?" He was still in his grimy leather clubbing outfit and couldn't imagine sitting at a family dinner.

"I'm so sorry. You wait right there," Annalee said unnecessarily. She came back with soccer mom clothes that were mortifyingly ladylike but at least would prevent him from being ogled by anyone when he passed them the potatoes. He wriggled into them, aware that his hostess was only pretending not to watch.

Thankfully the boy and girl came home and the husband shortly afterwards.

"Why are you dressed like that, Dad?"

"Went out and brought back this guy so we could finish working on that drainage ditch," he said, looking down at the enormous lumberjack-looking body. "I hear rain's in the forecast and we want to be prepared."

From the significant look the husband, Ray, sent to his wife, Dean gathered that the town was expecting hunters to come rescue him. As was he. Any minute now.

The Smiths came for dessert, as promised, but as soon as the children were hustled off to bed, Dean realized what was really on the menu. Thirty-one flavors of him.

He watched the two women (if that's what they were) whispering as they did the dishes.

"My choice first," Ray called over. "She's like something you'd see in a magazine."

For all he knew, Ray subscribed to the same porn Dean used to. "If you so much as lay a finger on me I'll have you across the room," Dean warned, finally realizing he was at some country version of a key party.

Ray had a silver knife at his throat before the captive could even refresh his protective incantation. "Nobody's going to make you do anything, honey, as long as you let us put just one finger at a time on you."

Dean had gotten some sleep when he was kidnapped in the truck coming up north, but all the tests had him already exhausted, so much so that keeping a silver weapon away from him took more mental focus than his new tattoo trick could accomplish. Still, getting poked at with a knife was better than coffee for waking you up. He was treated to the sight of Annalee becoming his (female) self and cavorting with the other three people in quick succession. Then, Dean was forced to shift into whatever porn star picture they put in front of him, whereupon, true to their word, it only took the touch of one finger for the person to take on the DNA Dean had assumed.

Finally, everyone else, too, was spent. "Do we have to give her up to the Watsons tomorrow?" Annalee asked. She'd retrieved a beach towel from a box in the refrigerator to restore the form her husband liked so well.

"That's the rules, while the Doc figures out what makes her tick," Ray said. "Just think, getting to see our grandkids." Annalee gave out a short sob and her husband held her.

"Are you people sick?" Dean asked, fearful of having caught some airborne germ while he was forced to witness other people's fantasies.

"We're born sick, have been for years," Mabel Smith said, "It's all right, none of the children can hear. All our babies barely make it into this world, and then we have to shift them right away with healthy babies' DNA, and keep giving it to them until their little bodies know how to be well," she said to the visitor. "That's why you'll not see a baby picture in this entire town. It's a sad thing for all of us to go through, but we've each done it once for the community."

"Each?" Dean inquired, "As in-?" he looked at the burly Ray.

"We all do our part," the man said, holding his wife close. "These days the shifter gene is about the only thing that works in us, out of the gate. And we can live to—early forties," Annalee sobbed once. "Before we start to fall apart. The doc's time is about up, so he's hoping you will be the thing to help us stay healthy."

"Have you considered whether fucking like bunnies with all and sundry has given you all rampant STDs?" Dean inquired absently. A good portion of the townspeople must be nearing their expiration dates, even if they looked healthy. He hoped that would be an advantage when his brother (and Cas?) eventually showed up. Which he hoped would be soon. He couldn't tell if it was the chains or what, but Dean was feeling very weak.

He fell asleep, chained to a chair, mumbling his Enochian mantra that gave a comforting warm feeling to his lower back.

"And whose team exactly is Balthazar playing for these days?" Sam inquired as they hid the car. "Because I think he's having a laugh at our expense with this plan."

"The Trojan Horse scenario is a classic precisely because it works," Castiel said with an assurance he did not feel. "And every sign Tim has been able to glean has said that the entire settlement is guarding every possibly method of ingress by land. Except, we postulate, their beer shipment."

"You'd think that if their noses are that good they'll be a little suspicious if two people stinking like a brewery come sneaking up on them," Sam complained. They were sitting in the back of a beer tanker, steeping in the yeasty remains of its contents, the rest of which had been spirited away by Balthazar, who looked forward to switching them out with holy water in baptismal fonts or some such prank.

"I think they will suspect nothing," Cas assured him. He had his semi-automatic blowgun rigged with the anti-mutation agent. He calculated that these creatures, who probably had little idea what they looked truly like, would be very distracted by suddenly taking on their natural forms. If he played on this fear, Castiel was relatively confident that he could regain his lover, at least in body. Perhaps once he understood, Dean would forgive Cas for letting his beloved be kidnapped rather than killed.

The truck rumbled to a halt. "All right," Sam checked the weapon he'd managed to keep out of the dregs of beer. "You handle the driver; I'll take care of everyone else."

The plan started off very well. Castiel knocked out the tanker truck driver, who was, after all, a civilian, while Sam was much more savage with the townspeople who owned the local beer garden. They were each left with a silver bullet in a limb, enough to slow them down, soon to break out and report that the community had been infiltrated.

The two hunters had worked together long enough to know how to lead a critter to a desired spot. Sam and Cas committed strategic acts of mayhem, such that the residents of Tiberion were funneled into the town square, where there was maximum room for viewing.

Castiel calculated that if he moved quickly, he'd be able to make his way in a northeasterly direction, the point from which his skin was starting to sing.

"All right!" Sam called out from the second-story office space he'd holed himself up in. "I think you know what we want, and we're prepared to take out anyone and everyone who keeps us from it."

"You and what army?" a well-built man called back, and there were whoops and hollers.

"Will the real Sam Winchester please stand up?" a voice called.

Sam swore as the other version of himself stepped into view. He had tried to be careful about touching people, but it's not always possible to fight without skin-to-skin contact.

"I'm downloading your plan as we speak, tough guy. So you think you can—" From down on the town green, Cas shot the fellow in the heart. The false Sam quickly devolved into a person with several tragic deformities.

"What did you do to him?" the crowd shouted.

"It's temporary, it'll—wear off," the person gasped, obviously compromised by the severe curvature to his spine.

"This version will wear off," Cas called into the crowd, shooting another. "But I am capable of synthesizing a permanent corrective to this genetic trait you have sustained with no other thought to your species. How many of your children, given the choice, would want to live as you do? I predict the end of life as you know it, given the option to attain the stable identity you all compulsively steal from others."

He shot again. The crowd was rushing for cover. "I also know precisely where a much better-hidden colony of your kind exists in Florida," and when he uttered the latitude and longitude, the townspeople gasped as one.

"Take me to your captive immediately, and I will tell no one what I know," he finished.

"Why should we trust a hunter?" a person in a white coat appeared at his side. "You probably laid a trail of breadcrumbs for the next set of hunters and the next."

"I have had no breadstuffs to eat yet today, but from one scientific person to another, I believe I can help you," Castiel said aloud, and then added more quietly, "Lead me to your prisoner, just me, and no one will be harmed."

He allowed himself to be evaluated for his sincerity and when he passed the test, Cas was led off, with Sam shouting in the distance, "Hey! This wasn't part of the plan!" as the townspeople surged at his crow's nest.

"Would you really know how to stabilize the mutation?" the doctor demanded. "My life's work has been to bring as many of our kind into the world as possible, but I've been unable to stop us from dying young."

"As soon as I see your prisoner is in good health, perhaps we can talk more about it," Cas said curtly. He could have run the last block to where the small yellow house lined up next to so many others, but he walked calmly to the place where his Dean was being held.

"What have you done with him!" the hunter demanded, kneeling next to the inert form of his love, still in his female form. He listened to the shallow breath. "What sort of procedures have you inflicted upon him?"

"Nothing," the doctor asked in consternation. "I ran him through the CAT scan a few times and took some blood, but that's all, I swear. I was counting on him to show me the way out of my, our, medical difficulties."

"And you shot my feet, filleted—my—my—" Dean coughed. He collapsed into Cas' arms.

Caring for nothing else except getting his lover medical attention, Castiel picked up Dean and carried him out into the street, where some of the town residents had assembled, Sam being held captive among them.

"Who's that? Why did you go off script for that shifter chick?" Sam asked.

Cas felt the hand clasping his arm. "Please, we'll agree to any terms, you must help us live longer," the doctor said, and the crowd began clamoring in agreement. The shifter suddenly released his hand and looked at it as if he'd been burned.

"What have you-?"

The assembled mob gasped in horror as the doctor crumbled into dust.

"He was our last hope!"

"Doc Mowry delivered my babies and made them well!"

The townsfolk surged through the small gate and tried to snatch Dean from his arms. With no free hands to defend himself, Cas suffered the blows on his face and his arms while bent double around his burden.

He was so intent upon protecting Dean that Cas didn't notice the screaming and tussling until everything suddenly went quiet. He took in the several piles of dust where his combatants had stood and traced their attempted escape by the additional heaps of detritus deposited throughout the crowd.

"He touched me, too!" one woman screamed and then she, too, disintegrated. The crowd pressed back, as far back as they could while surveying the monster among them with horror.

"Stand back!" Castiel rose to his feet with the inert body in his arms. "I'll do it again, I'll do it to all of you! Every one across the country! Let us pass!"

Sam followed behind a few steps and then stopped. "Cas, what the fuck? Maybe this chick was a victim all along, but I'm not leaving without my brother." He almost laid a hand on the hunter stalking ahead of him and then thought better of it. "Is there really something contagious about you?"

"If there was, don't you think you'd've picked me up with a Dustbuster before now, Sammie?" came the faint female voice. Then the body went totally limp.

"His pulse is very faint. I don't have time for philosophical debates, Sam," came the querulous tone. "Are you coming or aren't you?"

Cas had walked to the nearest car, settled Dean in the backseat and hot-wired it into ignition before a very shaken Sam slipped into the passenger seat without making any cracks about the former angel driving.

They drove out of the town limits and kept on going. "Where are we going? Tim's waiting in the motel that way," Sam pointed.

"There is a hospital in this direction; I thought it a given that we should seek traditional medical attention first," Cas replied. He had just enough mental space to wonder whether Tim had already gone off on his own, having gathered enough from his Ouija have left before Sam could piece together her true story and confront him with his charade.

Cas picked up the slack body once more and whispered in its ear. He carried his lover through the doors and had settled him in a wheelchair by the time Sam had parked the car.

When Sam saw his brother's pale form wearing soccer mom clothes and huddled in the chair, he fainted.

It was a grueling stay in the ER, but the doctors were unable to find any cause for the malaise that anyone could see in Dean's weak and sluggish movements. When he was discharged, Cas finally had enough attention to devote to the storm brewing on the other side of Dean's cot.

"Wait until we get in the Car, Sam."

He noted that the younger brother installed himself in the passenger seat again, the better to yell himself hoarse at Cas' expense.

"We were happy until all you hunters came back into our lives," came the small voice from the backseat.

"Listen to yourself: 'all _you_ hunters.' You can't be Dean in there anymore, because he might retire, but he'd never change sides like that."

Sam shouted his questions at the driver and then listened to the measured response. Cas carefully omitted any mention of Tim as he explained the treatment he developed on himself and then performed on Dean.

Finally they lapsed into silence. "If they were so interested in Dean, why didn't they sniff you out for a freak too?" Sam asked as they neared the motel.

"They smell nothing amiss when we are in our normal forms. Hearing Dean's explanation of their society, I hypothesize that a keen sense of smell was an adaptive trait."

"Don't think you can hide," Sam said as they unlocked the door. "I'm going to put your picture on every hunter's most-wanted list—Oh Tim, thank God. I bet your Ouija couldn't do this one justice."

Tim emerged from the bathroom in her female form but with the expression of someone who had lost everything. He sustained Sam's gaze and watched the realization that had evidently been waiting patiently just outside his lover's consciousness finally crash in.

"You did it too? You're still a guy in there?" Sam asked in a small voice, sitting down heavily on the bed.

"Depends on the occasion," she said. "I'm this if you want me to be." She made a small gesture and Sam covered his face.

Tim nodded, then he ventured, "You of all people, Sam, you should understand what it's like to be a little different than human."

"I do know! Cas here called me an abomination. He and his cronies would've wiped me off the map if they weren't so busy using me as a carrot for Dean. What this whole demon blood thing has taught me is that you have to work at being human. And I can't be around anyone who makes something so hard even harder."

He looked at the woman in front of him with nostalgia. "If this was something that happened to you, like you caught it somewhere, then we could still be friends. I'd stick up for you in front of any hunter."

His voice hardened. "If you gave me the respect to tell me before making this choice I could've broken up with you, but I would do my best not to put any hunters on your trail. But you didn't trust me enough to tell me, Tim. Because you knew exactly what I would think."

Sam got up to pace. "And I hate to say it, Tim, but my brother was right about you. There's nothing you won't do. He and I know that if you erase every boundary you become something you don't recognize awful fast. I need someone in my life that is my North, who lets me know where to point. And you are not that person, Tim. We're too much alike, in that sense, because I need my brother to keep me human. And now he's not human anymore." Sam's voice broke for the first and only time during that long conversation.

Tim asked in a steady voice, "What's the difference between what Cas did to himself so he and Dean could be together, and what Cas did for us? They love each other enough not to get hung up on the details."

"I guess I don't love you that way," Sam said coldly. "You never gave me the chance to love you that way. And what's more, I don't think someone who really loves me would ask me to change everything, or would change everything for me."

He pointed to where Cas was holding the weakened body of his brother. "You make this designer boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever you want that night, and see? There's a price to pay. I could have predicted something like this would happen, Cas, because I was never really that happy with Dean ending up with you, but it wasn't my choice."

Dean made a small noise of protest but his brother kept talking. "I mean, my brother kind of went nuts but I thought it might be some coming out thing."

"These guys are something a little more than a phase, Sam," Tim interjected.

"Maybe because you weren't following me around like you did Dean," Sam hurled at Cas, "But I could see you for what you were. Just as two-faced as the rest of your kind. You are the definition of moral relativism. Someone who's put everything else in front of people for millennia isn't going to change at the drop of a hat. It was your plan all along to disintegrate all those people today, wasn't it? Have you arranged the same thing to happen in Florida? That's genocide, Cas, regardless of whether I like the life form in question. Your kind thinks nothing of wiping away entire towns for the big picture."

"What?" Cas' voice raised an octave higher than normal. "Sam, I did a very poor job constructing this synthetic body. Every time I get an X-ray someone comments on it. These unstable people shifted into an unstable life form and couldn't survive it—how could I have predicted that?"

"Just like you didn't predict that shifter standing in for Tim?" Sam's voice came low and dangerous. "You had your eye on the long ball, like you angels always do. Collateral damage, was that it?" He turned to the other two men. "I ask both of you, would you let your worst enemy sleep with someone who was really something else? A complete stranger? That's a sexual violation. I don't hate anyone that much. And that goes for you, too, Tim, who could've left a note: 'Oh, by the way, you not getting hoodwinked into sleeping with Danny DeVito is more important to me than you finding out I'm still a guy.'"

There was a silence.

"Tim, Dean, this is where we part ways, but I promise to never send anyone after you unless you give me good reason. If you want my two cents, I think both of you deserve much better company than the real con, which is this thing—" he pointed at Cas, "Masquerading as a human. Cas, you pass me on the street, we don't know each other. You remind me in any way why I hate everything you stand for, and I'll give you reason to regret it. Dean, I don't think you realize how much I've stuck up for Cas in front of other hunters. Most weren't exactly crazy to have someone who used to think he was God on our side. You know, Tim, you heard what they say in places other than earth."

"I shouldn't've told you that," Tim said regretfully. "People shit-talk about you, too. My great-great-multi-great-grandmother thinks you're bad news. That's what goes on in the spirit plane. I don't think you're the worst of what people say. Not by a long shot."

Sam glared at the other bed where Cas was tenderly taking his brother's pulse. Suddenly, he whipped his head back to Tim. "Can you not do that around me?" he said of the unfamiliar female face.

"Would you have fallen in love with me if I was a six?" Tim asked. Sam was transfixed as her features shifted again. "A four?"

A much less attractive woman asked, "A two?

"You're sitting in judgment on a world you're very much a part of Sam. The rules of who gets what in life are completely arbitrary, and you fault me for trying to play the game better?

Who isn't going to rebel against a fate where they have to be alone forever or they can't be with the person they love?" he gestured to Cas and Dean. "I did this for me. And if there's something more human than trying to beat the human condition, then I'd like to know what it is."

Sam was frozen in place when Tim stood up in the male body he thought of as himself. "Are you ready?" he asked Cas.

"Wait! I haven't heard Dean say he wants to go anywhere," Sam objected. "You can't make decisions for him just because he's sick. Unless you mutated that, too."

The heap on the bed said in a quiet but clear voice, "What has been consecrated may not be broken asunder."

Sam shouted with tears in his voice, "You can't even say, 'It's my life, asshole, I'm going to do what I want.' You spout some pseudo-Biblical nonsense from Cas. Do you even have a personality in there anymore?"

Cas carried Dean in his arms and the three men exited the motel. When Sam looked out the window a moment later, they were nowhere to be found.


	14. Chapter 14

Cas was in the lab running his hundredth test while cursing himself for the thousandth time when the call came in.

He was chasing down the trace of the shifter DNA he theorized had contaminated Dean during his stay in the colony.

"Do you remember any skin reaction when they touched you for shifting purposes?" he'd asked Dean on the way down to Maryland in the car rented thanks to one of Tim's stolen IDs.

"They touched my arm with one finger. I don't know, it was so skeevy watching them, like there were no people behind their faces," Dean had murmured before he faded off again.

Cas had brought blood and tissue samples into the lab after seeing Dean settled at home under the care of Tim. "Are you sure we shouldn't take him back to the hospital?" their friend said.

"I broke him, now I'm the only one that can fix him," Cas declared and stormed out.

He tried to think of some precedent for an allergic reaction to a foreign genetic code and then continued cursing himself for having taken them all off the map, medically speaking. Dean had been injured many times during the examinations. Castiel had never thought to test what sort of damage could be caused by multiple traumas left behind in discarded forms when they returned to their normal states?

There were so many questions he had not asked during his single-minded pursuit of a life with Dean. Castiel truly felt at sea. He was unable to concentrate—Sam's accusations had upset him a great deal, as his faulty humanity was a secret obsession. And he had always sensed the coolness emanating from his love's brother.

"Cas," the doctor he knew as Annette startled him at the door to his private office. "You need to call home. There's been some sort of emergency."

The woman seemed startled that he had any connections capable of having emergencies, possessed as she was of the misconception that he was an autistic savant prone to wandering around in amnesiac fugues.

He froze there for a moment, test-tube in hand and then prepared to run out the door. "Cas!" she called and motioned for him to take off his lab coat.

Castiel strode right past the wide-eyed Tim and into the room. He stopped by the bedside of the groggy woman having her blood pressure taken. "Are you the fiancé?" the nurse asked.

"Yes. Has there been some complication that would require sedation?"

"Other than the miscarriage, no. But she was hysterical and the doctor felt it best to calm her down. Her friend didn't know very much—I take it this was a pregnancy she desired very much?"

"Losing it was quite a shock, but I understand that is very common early on," Castiel said in a neutral tone. "Everything is otherwise all right?"

"Yes, no reason to worry. I'm sure you can try again."

The nurse bustled out. "Like hell you will," came the low tone from the bed.

"Dean, I'm sorry that you were alone through this difficult experience. This never occurred to me as a possibility."

"To me either, or I would have done a few things differently. As in, not at all." Cas tried to smooth the long hair out of her face and Dean flinched. "The worst thing is, I'm like stuck in this body right now. The whole time I was kidnapped I kept returning to this Asian hottie look and I thought it was because seeing myself from the outside made me hate myself a little."

"Never say that," Castiel said softly. "Hate me. I didn't think this mutation through very well, and only now have realized that we have no idea what to expect. Including that you can create a working female reproductive system at will."

"Yeah, well I un-will it. Say goodbye. From now on we have gay sex, just like God intended." Dean snatched his hand away from his lover. "If they hadn't shot me up with the good shit, we wouldn't even be on speaking terms. Go away."

Shortly after Dean returned to the apartment he became a very annoyed man and stayed that way. Cas was kicked out of the place for two days. When he was allowed back he was the recipient of the silent treatment, which, coming from a very expressive person, was extremely ominous. Tim disappeared during this time without leaving word, but the couple was too distracted to make note of it.

"I'm sorry," Castiel said again one morning when the eggs he made were finally received.

"For what, specifically?"

"Your brother is the most important thing in your life, and because of me you are now estranged," was the first thing that came into his head.

"Sam? That's not on you," Dean scoffed. "You're still new to this life thing, so let me tell you—that little fit of his, that's what someone acting like a colossal dick looks like. Don't apologize for him getting on his high horse." Cas looked relieved. "Apologize for leaving letting me be kidnapped, you ass!" His coffee sloshed out of the cup when he set it down with a bang.

"It was beyond my control, Dean. I was so worried that I found myself acting irrationally."

Dean was thrown off his stride. Cas was never irrational. "We've done tons of jobs together, Cas, why flip out now?"

A shamefaced Castiel shared the deep fear that had been eating away at him for so long. Dean listened to the jumble of concerns about not being able to save Dean during a confrontation in which they were outnumbered by shifters. Cas thought it was a better idea to exploit his connections in other realms to help, though he wasn't sure of being able to hock his soul because he wasn't sure he had one. He even shared his most private worry about his probable soullessness separating them for all eternity.

"What? Of all the half-ass reasons to let your significant other be kidnapped!" Dean was indignant. "Of course you have a damn soul. Give me some credit to know I'm not dating an automaton." He paused and amended, "You're a little rough around the edges, but I like you like that. You're human!"

His lover couldn't resist saying, "Perhaps I wouldn't like mistreating you so well if I had a real soul. Balthazar wouldn't tell me either way, and I suspect he was saving my feelings."

"Good! You would've bargained it away to get me back or something, and then we'd really have something to worry about. Consider yourself lucky that you have a friend upstairs and promise me you won't be irrational like that again."

"Of course," Cas said.

"If you go all Terminator like Sam did without a soul, I'll tell you, all right?" Dean said. "Which is why you're going to sit there and listen to all the reasons I'm still pissed at you."

Castiel humbly received the tongue-lashing for not taking precautions during their heterosexual activities, pushing his soul worries into the same place where he stored his regret at losing a chance to procreate with Dean. At the end he heard, "I don't want to have one of these freaks! You didn't see their society—something like that has no business reproducing. And that goes double for a dude!"

"They were desperate to save their civilization—people will do anything to save what's important to them," Cas murmured.

"You didn't see them! They made me want to start going to church, the kind of place where they cast out the devil and stuff." His one country key party had scarred Dean for life.

"At most those are minor demons exorcised at these services," Cas remarked.

"I bet they scare people straight!" Dean reconsidered. "Well, I don't want that, but they keep people from coveting each other's wives to the point that everybody's had everybody else, and has access to their memories of screwing all the other people in town. There was no privacy—they jumped all over each other like hungry locusts that saw something and had to have it." Dean shuddered. "Thank God our little monster didn't go any further."

"You don't know that it was deformed," Castiel clarified.

"It felt wrong! And it was gross!" Dean exploded.

"Perhaps if you weren't constantly shifting away from it you wouldn't have gotten ill," his partner risked.

"We are not talking about this. Especially from the deadbeat dad that let his monster-to-be get kidnapped! Why would I procreate you ever again?"

A year later, the two new lives Castiel helped bring into this world almost didn't make it, and when they did it was almost at the price of another life.

When things looked truly hopeless he gathered together the necessary items and ran to the nearest crossroads.

"They told me to expect you," the demon gloated. "Castiel. You're so many steps removed from human you make me feel high-rent."

"You mean?" His overwrought nerves jangled with dread.

"I mean whatever you're sellin', we're not buyin.'" Her red eyes mocked his despair.

Cas was crushed. "So, it's not really a soul at all, powering this," he stated, indicating his body.

"Would Lucifer have given us all a strict no-can-do if it was?" She peered at him critically. "I'd say you have a sort of reflection, like the moon reflects light from the sun. Speaking of which, your light source, that boy or whatever he is, Dean is one hot piece. No wonder you needed to give it to him so many different ways. He couldn't get enough."

Castiel stood there and listened to the demon needling him while he wept with futility.

"Don't be so down," she said, "Maybe it'll all work out. We've got a pool going in Hell. Best bet is on one of the twins making it at least."

He snatched up the box containing the useless conjuring materials and dashed back to the hospital.

"Where did you go?" the pale woman asked from the bed where she was hooked up to tubes and monitors. "They're healthy. They're fine." She gave an exhausted sigh of relief.

"Of course they are," Cas said, smiling that everyone had made it through that harrowing night alive. Even if he hadn't run extensive genetic tests, he would have known that nothing abominable could ever come out of a loving decision to start a family.

By the time the twins were back at home with him and Dean, there were no more questions about this pregnancy that had been examined so closely. Though the former angel had no experience in such matters, being in a family was very natural.

He made good use of his mutation, learning how to shift such that he rarely had to sleep. This enabled Cas to spend nearly equal amounts of time on being a father and on his research.

Over the next four years he discovered what seemed to be two viable genetic treatments for cystic fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, along with countless other leads passed on to other researchers.

When the scientific magazine took his photograph for their feature on the rising star in the genetics field, Dean was appalled with the result. "Couldn't they at least have taken a picture of you looking not miserable? People are going to think I'm not doing everything possible to make you happy." He smirked and kept flipping through the story with the fictionalized past he'd helped concoct.

The truth is, the photographer tried and failed to depict Cas in a more positive light. The former angel knew that in the haunted face that appeared in every photo his secret torment was seeping out of his eyes. He truly had no soul. Every moment of happiness with his family struck against the blank face of an eternity without them.

It was a torture, knowing that he would never get to share Heaven with Dean. Nor would he eventually be able to visit his two sons by any of the many tricks he knew about heavenly navigation. At least, there was no doubt in his mind that that's where his husband was destined. Dean's soul shone out of all the bodies they shared that were now incidental to the bond that would be someday shattered by death.

They had expected to live a long time. After all, their mutation made them invulnerable to many threats. So Sam had grudgingly acknowledged when they saw him again nearly three years after he had disowned his brother.

Sam and Tim showed up one day bearing their own infant.

"I waited for Sam to admit he was wrong and finally I didn't want to wait anymore," Tim said, wearing the male features he preferred. "It's just stupid for you guys not to be talking."

"I'll take him showing up with you to mean that he realized he was wrong about something," the elder Winchester said. He caught the newcomers staring at the two boys who looked precisely like a combination of Dean's and Cas' features. "We used a surrogate!" He burst out defensively.

"So did we," Tim said with an equally shifty glance.

"I congratulate you ion your fine choice of mates," Cas said very formally to the Sam that seemed uncomfortable in his presence.

"Well, it was a compromise. Johnny is going to have two dads," Sam said with some reluctance.

"Remember, sweetie, you won the coin toss on who you get to spend the night with," Tim reminded him.

Dean was trying to fathom this odd arrangement. "But that's, that's—"

"Exactly the brilliant sort of compromise I would expect from Tim," Cas broke in, elbowing his spouse.

Sam addressed his brother. "It was like how it happened for you with Cas. You know someone for a while and then suddenly one thing changes and you finally see them there. And it hits you like a tidal wave. I tried going back to not seeing this great girl, and then I realized I was being hard-headed. One of the many Winchester character defects." Tim directed a significant look at Castiel.

Still avoiding direct eye contact with Cas, Sam continued. "I wish it all would have happened differently, but Tim runs circles around me, so I guess you're at least healthy, Dean."

"We're going to be close enough that you guys can try to come to some understanding," Tim added, seeing Dean's cold expression after that less-than-ringing endorsement of his life. "Sam's about to start grad school in the area. "I convinced him that everything he's seen on the road would make him a great professor of anthropology."

"She's right-I can be the sort of person we used to seek out when we were stumped on a case and still help out. At least all our experiences won't have been for nothing," the younger brother agreed and then caught himself. "I mean, 'he.' Hopefully I'll learn which pronoun to use when. Haven't heard about you going back on the job, brother."

Dean was embarrassed at being caught out as the house-husband. "These guys are a full-time job," he mumbled, gesturing at the kids playing at their feet. In truth, he'd never gotten a steady job after getting off the road. There were always so many things the two men wanted to do together.

But they had had so little time. Not long after Tim and Sam moved to the area, Dean and Cas left their boys with the other couple for a long weekend getaway. They drove to New York, Dean happy to be on the road again, if only for a little while. He reminisced about different jobs worked along the way and insisted upon trying to find what he claimed was the best pizza parlor he'd ever visited, just outside the city in Union, New Jersey.

There were any number of Italian restaurants in that section of town, so while Dean walked around and tried to remember which place had the perfect slice, Castiel was staring off into space, thinking about a portion of the human genetic code he'd recalled under meditation a few days ago.

The spray of bullets woke Cas up from his reverie. One hit him in the shoulder as he ran towards the gunfight while the shooters were screeching away, but he wasn't very concerned about it because it wasn't silver. That's why he wasn't in a full panic as he pushed his way into the pizza shop where Dean had entered a few moments before.

He stood stock-still. Two people had been shot, but the only thing Castiel could see was Dean. "Atropos, you bitch," he said, in hopes that the Fate-sister who cut a person's destiny short was still in the vicinity to hear.

The law enforcement officers soon swarmed around the crime scene. From far away Cas heard them talking about an ongoing turf war between two rival branches of the organized crime that held on in the area. They called it an unfortunate accident. The loss of his beloved was merely an unfortunate accident to these people, but Cas knew that couldn't be the case.

Castiel was familiar with the hand of Fate. He recognized their sadistic irony at work in having one of the shooting victims crash into a glass cabinet, which had a heavy silver tray displayed on top. Dean was beheaded by the one substance that was sure to do so.

He wished with all his heart that he could have his angelic faculties back just long enough to hunt down each of the Fates who had a role in snipping off the golden thread of Dean's life, without which he would slowly but surely unravel.

They allowed him a few moments alone with Dean's sheeted remains. "Be at peace, Dean. The boys and I will be fine."

Two years later, Castiel was transferring to the metro on a day when the platform was crowded due to some sporting event that had just let out. His mind was clacking away as it had done these twenty-three months, working at the genetics problems that were the best way for him to avoid thinking about Dean. Cas was so committed to keeping up a routine for the children's sake, that it never occurred to him that this brave face wouldn't be enough to keep things going on indefinitely.

The drunken fans got into some kind of shoving match and an unlucky push caught the scientist unawares. Cas found himself sailing in front of the train as it headed around the corner into the station. He had enough time to think—"If the injuries are not too grave, I should be able to shift them away. I'll be there for the boys." The impact shattered his poorly constructed skeleton and tore him apart.

His last thought was that he was too tired to try and knit the broken pieces of himself into some serviceable whole. He was utterly exhausted by having to fear an eternity alone and curiously grateful for this chance to finally stop holding it all together.

He stood up and walked lightly away from his mangled remains. "Hello, Bertram," Castiel said to the reaper he knew well.

"Always nice to see you, Cas," Bertram said.

"Shall we go?"

"Are you sure you don't want to ask me anything? That's what people normally do at this moment," the reaper reminded him kindly.

"No. I have no questions." Castiel could feel the icy atmosphere of eternity and it was causing all of his old angelic memories to fill his head in a rush. At the very last, he would have plenty to think about in Purgatory.

Bertram gave him a sad smile and led him away.

Castiel came to himself and looked around, his eyes alighting on his beloved. His heart leapt. Could he have made it to Heaven after all?

"What the hell are you doing here?" Dean shouted.

He slapped Cas across the face.

Castiel was utterly lost. He could only smile at this familiar misery that only his lover could bring him.

"Don't just stand there grinning like an idiot! You dumbass, you're not supposed to be here now."

"I don't know how, Dean, but we have been allowed to stay together. We are very fortunate." Cas touched the features that were so much more vivid than his oft-traveled memories.

"Aren't you forgetting a little something? Two little somethings? About yeah high by now?" Dean laughed bitterly. "I like to think they're gifted, but by age 6 our kids can't hotwire a car much less commit credit card theft. And they'll never know because you aren't there to pass on everything I taught you." Dean clattered some dishes around in the version of their apartment in DC, which was one of his most frequent ways of seeing heaven.

"The boys are already used to Tim and Sam, so it will be a seamless transition to living with them full time," Cas assured his mate.

"What do you mean—used to?" Dean wanted to know.

"It's been two years without you. Tim insisted that I accept their help since I wasn't always up to the challenge, though I gave everything I had," Cas assured.

"Well, couldn't you have pulled yourself together or something? Now my kids are going to grow up with no taste in music!"

"Maybe I could have tried harder," Cas admitted. "There was a moment when everything flashed before my eyes and I saw how tired I was of trying." He explained how his growing obsession with a soulless eternity was dwarfing his struggle to make a good present for their family.

"We went through this!" was the response. "I told you this was crazy thinking, and look!" he gestured around their celestial former kitchen. "I was right! If you'd been able to keep your head in the game, my children wouldn't be raised by my high and mighty brother. He'll tell them all kinds of crap about me, and God forbid, about you. They won't be cool kids in school. They won't have fun."

Dean was genuinely aggrieved by surrendering his boys to the brother with whom he'd not fully mended fences. He yelled himself hoarse.

"Whoa, it's getting way too shouty in this sector of Heaven," Balthazar said from where he'd appeared by the refrigerator. "I can see some explanations are in order." He took a seat at the kitchen table next to the wary Castiel.

"First off," the angel ticked off on his imaginary fingers, "Cas' number was up just like yours, so don't blame him for not abiding by Dean Winchester's timetable of how he wants the world to work. Castiel is in a better place. You have all your old memories back, don't you, Cas? You know how to get around Heaven and can come visit with any of us lads any time you like."

Dean looked stricken. "You're going to go gallivanting about Heaven with your old buddies? You just got here. This thing you call Heaven sucks so far, Balthazar."

The angel grinned. "It goes without saying that you're Cas' plus-one at any heavenly venue. You two are superstars in these parts, and in Hell. Lucy is so jealous that we can have face time with you. He's a big fan."

The couple exchanged a confused look. "Lucifer thought so little of me he ordered that my soul be barred from any dealings with his demons," Cas said.

"Of course he did. Otherwise you would have pawned your soul right away to get Dean out of some scrape and we've seen that show many times before with him and his brother," the angel yawned.

"Our lives aren't a choose your own adventure for all of your entertainment!" Dean burst out.

"Don't kid yourselves. All appearances to the contrary, Cas didn't get here by suffering up a storm. And you didn't get here on your back, Dean. Or rather, that's precisely how you made it upstairs, because you were doing it together in a very entertaining manner for all the universe. That earned you infinite encores in Heaven with special VIP access for you and the little missus, Castiel. I would have thought you would be pleased."

"Is this Heaven or isn't it?" Cas asked, not liking how his afterlife still embroiled in celestial politics was falling short of his daydreams.

"I better be your idea of Heaven," Dean shot back. "I've clawed my way into the administrative areas a few times just to complain about the big heaping pile of nothing that I got."

"Mouthy here was pining away for you and filled out many, many comment cards to that effect," Balthazar observed.

"Then why are you so unhappy to see me?" Cas queried.

"Because you weren't supposed to come yet," Dean said quietly. "I only wanted to be sure that you would come eventually. That would have made everything all livable. There's plenty of good memories but I don't like knowing I'm playing house with the Sims version of you forever."

Balthazar raised an eyebrow. "Sound familiar, Cas? If only you could be sure you'd end up in a double bunk with your charming hubby forever, you would have enjoyed every moment of the last two years. You were still figuring all this out on earth, but Dean wasted two perfectly good years in Heaven being a pain in the ass."

"You knew I had a soul all along," Cas said quietly. "What advantage did you gain from keeping this from me all the times I asked?"

"No one discloses all of this outright, of course, but there are a couple theories about you, Castiel," Balthazar said. "Smart money is that our management thought that you would indeed sacrifice your soul for Dean right out of the gate, just like Lucifer, and that you wouldn't get the full experience you hung up your halo for. Both sides believed that your doubting about whether you had a soul would be much more meaningful, or in Lucifer's case, more excruciating, for you."

Cas' mind was back in gear, weighing his options within the angelic political tides.

"It ate him up inside!" Dean objected. He caught his lover's surprised look. "Give me some credit. Of course I knew. It's not like I thought either of us was a likely candidate for a harp and halo set. I was pretty shocked myself when they let me in, knowing how many angels I pissed off. But I had to compartmentalize so at least one of us was happy."

"My personal theory is that if Cas didn't have some kind of crash course in humanity during his short allotted time on earth, he wouldn't have time to make it here," Balthazar opened his arms. "to be your eternal henpecked spouse," he said sardonically to Dean. "You knew the game too well, brother, having seen it from the position of management. You would have tried to beat the house using our old tricks, and that way you would surely have lost. Perhaps someone was looking out for you after all," he said fondly.

Then the angel returned to his usual ironic tone. "Besides, you made an excellent cautionary tale, Cas. This is what any angel thinking of defecting can expect—a heaping serving of misery with someone who probably isn't as adventurous in bed. Everything you did to catch and keep Cas was very engrossing, Dean," Balthazar licked his lips, "But watching Cas slowly come apart without your lover while trying to be a good father had every angel glued to their set, let me tell you. Keeping Up with Cas and Dean had top ratings during its run."

"I hate reality shows," Dean murmured to his mate. By this time the two men were clinging to each other as if to better protect themselves from the harsh angelic light that was being trained upon their intimacy.

"This way, everyone was glued to the Cas and Dean show, they experienced the catharsis of you falling in love, struggling to stay with your lover, having some very creative sex, and no one feels the need to chuck it all to experience it for themselves. That's why everyone is dying to see you both, so come take a bow for your fans. Put on something or someone come-hither, Dean, don't disappoint."

Balthazar disappeared.

"This sure as shit isn't what I pictured my Heaven would be like, and I've been here before," Dean said morosely. "Sorry I got so mad at you, Cas, I'm glad you're here."

They kissed in silence for a long time. "You look amazing, my God, it's really you, Cas, instead of a memory who says the same thing over and over." Castiel was examining his face in silence. "Say something. Are your angel cronies going to be messing around in our lives here too?"

"I hope that you are able to get to know my old friend while you are here. Balthazar does everything for a reason. I believe he came by here to yes, let us know that we have attained some notoriety in angelic circles, but also to make sure I was aware of the many advantages I possess because of my recuperated memories." He got up from the kitchen table and took a knife from the counter.

Dean watched in surprise the other man cut his hand and begin drawing on the wall in blood. "What the hell are you doing?"

Cas turned around with the first real smile since attaining his fondest dream. "This is an Enochian sigil that is excellent for privacy. During the last millennium or so I began to be discontent and wished to have time away from the ceaseless intrigues and chatter common among my brothers. I've developed several of these and have the capability to create more. No one will be able to get in here for some time."

Dean took his hand and they walked into the bedroom that had sponsored so much pleasure. They slipped between the sheets and their skin began getting reacquainted after the long separation. "What do you think Balthazar meant by me getting to heaven on my back, he asked?"

Cas arranged them in that position. "I'm afraid that your portion of Heaven will not be exactly normal, but I am very happy with having my piece of paradise back again."

They fitted themselves together, two pieces of an apparatus that was now rowing itself in the waters of infinity.

~fin~


End file.
